


bittern & hoopoe

by beetle



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Yoga, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Crush, Awkward Dates, Awkward First Times, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Kissing, Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkwardness, Blasto - Freeform, Buddy Cops, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everybody Else Has a Schtick Too, Everyone's a cop, Except Zaeed and Scott, F/F, F/M, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Guns, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Idiots in Love, M/M, Meet-Cute, Mercenaries, Military, Multi, Other, Past-Garrus Vakarian/Adrien Victus, Police Procedural, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Rocket to the Face, Pre-Poly, Recovering from Gunshot Wounds, Scott Ryder is a REALLY foul-mouthed Hatha Yoga Instructor, Smut, Vaksani, Yoga, meet-not-so-cute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-02 22:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14554767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: “Where do you like best to feed your flocks?” said a man to an old cow-herd.“Here, sir, where the grass is neither too rich nor too poor, or else it is no use.”“Why not?” asked the man.“Do you hear that melancholy cry from the meadow there?” answered the shepherd, “that is the bittern; he was once a shepherd, and so was the hoopoe also. I will tell you the story. . . .”—The Bittern and the Hoopoe, The Brothers GrimmOR:“A meet-cute meets soap opera meets half-assed police procedural/buddy-cop movie,” in which Det. Garrus Vakarian’s upbeat, idiot partner falls head-over-heels in stupid-lust with a volatile, outspoken, annoyingly hot Yoga instructor.Garrus, meanwhile, plays it smart, and sticks to bonding with and obsessing over said idiot partner’s capable, clever, compellingly unpredictable—and also annoyingly hot—father.Because Garrus issmart.(Updated weekly, on Sundays.)





	1. ONE: The Beginning of the Rest of His (Life) Administrative Leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThreeWhiskeyLunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeWhiskeyLunch/gifts).



> Notes/Warnings: Modern, all-human AU. VERY AU. _Don’t_ expect straight canon parallels, though there will be a few. Expect lots of hard-bitten/salty-ass/cartoonish motherfucking _cop-lingo_ , banter, smut, feels, some friendships, backstory, broken family dynamics, healing family dynamics, smart-assery, dumbassery, snark and sarcasm, emotional idiocy, dysfunctional-relationships that get less so, cameos, PTSD issues, and kink. Also, some angst. Happy/hopeful ending planned, though! Title from [the Brothers Grimm fairytale of (mostly) the same name.](http://grimm.pangyre.org/tale/173-the-bittern-and-the-hoopoe.html)  
> ::shifty eyes::
> 
> For [ThreeWhiskeyLunch, and for ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewhiskeylunch)[Zaeed Goddamn Massani Appreciation Week](https://goddamnbadassmerc.tumblr.com/post/172553546537/zaeed-goddamn-massani-appreciation-week-zaeed): _Day 7: Free for all! Anything not covered above, or that you’d like to have a do-over about._

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After three months of sheer Hell—and that was _after_ the Arterius Case went all to shit and blew up in everyone’s faces . . . some of them literally—newly-exonerated and promoted Detective First-Grade, Garrus Vakarian, and his new partner are on Administrative Leave from the SRU. Garrus has finally let said partner and long-time friend, Det. Bain Massani, drag him out to the ol’ Massani homestead for some R  & R.

“. . . and I was _pretty sure_ Vega was just talkin’ his usual shit about goddamn-fucking-nothing. Then, I start noticin’ the way the three of them eye-fuck each other when they forget they’re not the only ones in the fucking bullpen—aaaand _you’re_ not listenin’ to a word I’m saying.” A grim, pointed beat passed in which Garrus continued to hear Bain's chatter but also continued to ignore it. “Yup. You’re just brooding out that window into the rainy, angsty Citadel night while I entertain me, myself, and the windshield. Some partner _you_ are, Vakarian. Seven hours in, and I already feel like I should trade _you_ in for fucking Blasto.”

 

Newly-minted Detective first-grade Garrus Vakarian snorted, but didn’t shift his tired, sand-and-broken-glass eyes from their thousand yard-stare out his partner’s passenger-side window. Meridian Place Market was a sad, wetted-down blur of almost running color. Garrus could barely make out the garish-huge _Nos Astra Sporting Goods_ sign, and the damned thing was digital and brightly backlit. “No arguments from _me_ , Massani. But let’s be honest: Blasto wouldn’t have you. You’d only slow Blasto down. Blasto works alone, enkindling criminal scum and blowing shit up on his own terms. Blasto has no time for your shenanigans and is also too old for this shit.”

 

“Yeah,” Bain agreed semi-wistfully, semi-sadly, then sighed, hanging a right and picking up speed to get them through the South Commons, thence out of the Presidium District, altogether. “All that James Bond meets John McClane shit is half the reason I joined the Force. The other half being all the free donuts and coffee. Which I’m still waiting for, by the way. Maybe someday . . . hopefully before I collect my pension. . . .”

 

“You’re a man of principle and conviction.”

 

“Y’know, _Blasto_ would probably say the same thing, but without the snotty sarcasm. And I bet he and I _would_ be a phenomenal-goddamn-team, since my new and _current_ partner is such a big, whiny, _snarky_ ingrate.”

 

At this, Garrus stirred himself for a more _effortfully snarky_ comeback. If anyone was worth that effort, even when Garrus was utterly drained, it was Bain Massani. He was even almost smiling as he said: “If you believe all _that,_ Massani . . . then Santa still sees you and loves you.”

 

“Huh. Goddamn _right_. Can ya blame the old creeper?”

 

Garrus snorted again and rolled his eyes. He didn’t even have to look over from the rain-drenched cityscape speeding by to know his partner of nearly eight hours was doing more flexing of his “pythons” than safe driving. This certainty was driven home by the noticeable drift of Bain’s sleek, black Charger toward the road-shoulder, followed by a muttered _ah, fuck!_ then a sharp swerve fully back into the right lane.

 

“Ah, Bain. _Bain, Bain, Bain_ ,” Garrus sighed. Then swore as his partner hung a final, hard _left_ onto Serpentine Way, which would shortly become the main highway out of the city, proper. After that it was a straight shot south, on 8S, passing through the Silversun Strip—which, frankly, Garrus was half-convinced he could already spot, splashing its ridiculous electric glare off the overcast sky—then Tayseri Ward: Garrus’s home-away-from-home for the next twenty-two days. He sighed again, not even bothering to shake his head. “I've never met anyone as sexy or distractable as you.”

 

“Yeah? You think I’m _sexy_ , Vakarian?” Garrus could sense Bain preening cheerfully at the backhanded compliment. “Aww, you sweet-talkin’ motherfu— _oi, look! A squirrel!_ ”

 

When Garrus burst out laughing, finally reining in his gaze from the wet-depressing fall night, Bain swatted his bicep and chuckled, too.

 

“ _There_ you are, you happy arsehole. Huh, maybe I’ll take a pass on trading-in partners, for now. _For now_ ,” he warned, grinning big and slowing a bit as he hit the on-ramp for 8S. The blurry-dull scenery was, Garrus knew, about to get blurrier and duller—at least for the next twenty minutes or so. At this time of evening, even as peak rush hour wound down, 8S was still basically bumper-to-bumper gridlock, with ‘burb-rats fleeing the warren of bureaucratic incompetence and despair that was the Presidium, for the outlying districts and Wards of the Citadel.

 

A glance out the driver’s-side window showed that 8N was practically an empty parking lot. Not surprising, considering that once the sun went down, no one wanted to hang around the sterile, heavily-policed Presidium and Commons, when all the fun was out at Silversun Strip and other districts of similar ilk and less savory reputation.

 

Garrus supposed _fun_ was in the eye of the beholder. He’d never found much of anything fun, per se. Though he’d certainly found some academic pursuits and hobbies rather edifying—economics, law, governance, civil engineering—and a few other things besides imminently useful . . . he wasn’t, as far as he knew, built for _fun_.

 

Unlike his new, rarely-bored partner and first long-time friend.

 

Glancing over at Bain, who had one hand mostly on the wheel and was firing off a text message on his ridiculous phone-tablet with the other, Garrus fought a wry smile. Despite being the older of the two of them by nearly four years and having been a cop for about that much longer (made detective first-grade three years before Garrus made detective third-grade), he still tended to be, in many visible and invisible ways, a younger and easier man. _Lighter_. Even at his darkest and downest, there was something ineffable about him that drew others’ gaze and notice and interest. Even Garrus wasn’t immune to it—in a platonic sort of way.

 

Bain Massani was certainly a handsome man and charming in his weird-blunt fashion. But very much not Garrus’s type. Nor was Garrus Bain’s type. When Bain wasn’t indulging in his tumultuous, insane _whatever_ with his shifty-charming, on-again/off-again bartender boyfriend, he tended to chase after emotionally unavailable overachievers—of any gender—who were even worse relationship-material than Bain, himself.

 

But it could never be said that Bain lacked for chutzpah—a big, brass pair of . . . chutzpah—and a certain amusing sort of blarney. He probably couldn’t talk birds out of their trees, but Garrus had seen him talk some fairly respectable wants and needs, many of which were in people-form, into the palm of his hand.

 

Garrus supposed that was why—after nearly a year of his new partner’s cajoling and afterschool special-type peer-pressuring—he’d picked tonight to relent. To finally let Bain drag him out to _The Hacienda_. Otherwise known as _Bain’s Dad’s house_.

 

Smirking mirthlessly out at the dinged-up Acura that was waiting ahead of them to merge onto the main highway out of the Presidium, for the southern suburbs beyond the huge Citadel, Garrus shook his head. Like so many of his decisions and actions since the beginning of his three-year obsession with the city’s elite SpecTRe Unit—and its internal corruption—Bain’s blarney aside, the reason for him caving on The Hacienda-visit could be summed up in three words— _two_ words, if the second of the three was considered optional.

 

Saren- _fucking_ -Arterius.

 

Now scowling and glaring out at traffic and the night, Garrus had to stop himself from reaching for his service weapon. Saren Arterius had seemed to be the answer and reason for _everything_ in Garrus’s life that’d gone out into left field and into the weedy acreage beyond. And it’d certainly been the answer and reason for all that’d gone wrong since the shit came down around the Force’s ears almost three months ago.

 

The aftermath of Garrus’ stealth-investigation of Lt. Saren Arterius—then Garrus’s neck-deep collusion with the Special Response Unit, mostly limited to Lt. Shepard, and Sgt. Alenko and newly first-grade Det. Bain Massani—had been an absolute shit-storm of a climax.

 

It had been, in short, stressful, depressing, disheartening, baffling, pessimistic, nihilistic, optimistic— _fatalistic_ —then wary hope had shaded into total befuddlement that had carried Garrus through the final Internal Affairs hearings, the closing of IA’s investigation four days ago, and his own promotion ceremony, earlier this day. Which was followed, of course, by his reassignment, which would be official after twenty-two days of paid Administrative Leave with continuing, mandated psych-appointments and evals.

 

(“Leave.” As if Garrus _hadn’t_ already been getting paid to do fuck-all since the Arterius clusterfuck. Fuck-all, other than stew during his annoyingly lengthy hospital-stay and convalescence. Then ride a desk and audit back Investigations Unit files for five weeks, two days, six hours, and some-odd minutes, after his Sick Leave had finally ended and _prior_ to his exoneration, promotion, and reassignment to SRU.)

 

But even more so than the climax and falling action of the case, the denouement had looked to be a stone bitch. Featuring, at best, Garrus, Bain, and a good part of the SRU—from Captain Anderson, Lt. Shepard, on down—possibly . . . perhaps _only barely_ managing to get out of the whole mess without winding up in federal penitentiaries. Never mind still in possession of their badges, ranks, or pensions.

 

Bain, incurable Pollyanna that he was, had far too frequently assured Garrus throughout the course of many hard-drinking nights since springing him from the hospital, that: “An’thin’s poss’ble, V’karian. Trust.”

 

And Garrus had always allowed that that was true enough. _Anything_ was _possible_.

 

A _Blasto_ film with an award-winning screenplay and tour-de-force performances was _possible_ , technically.

 

But if Garrus had learned one thing over the past eight years, it had been: _Don’t hold your damned breath for “possible.” Or learn to love passing-the-hell-out._

 

That he’d emerged relatively unscathed— _though scarred_ , he reminded himself now, as he smiled and the still-healing scar tissue and skin-grafts holding together the right side of his lower face, mouth, chin, and jaw pulled . . . ached and _resisted_ —was a pure miracle. And it certainly hadn’t hurt that Cpt. Anderson and Lt. Shepard had lobbied _hard_ for Garrus to be pulled from his dead-end assignment in the IU and brought into the SRU-fold even before the dust of the Arterius Case had begun to settle.

 

“Hey-hey, guy?”

 

Garrus blinked and started when Bain punched his arm firmly, rather than swatted. He looked over at his partner and caught a wry-knowing smile on his face _and_ in his dark, old soul-eyes. “I’m not your ‘guy,’ pal.”

 

“And I’m not your ‘pal,’ buddy,” Bain replied, winking. Then, after a quick glance out the windshield, he floored it into the 8S merge-lane, only narrowly avoiding being rear-ended by a tank of an old Beamer. Garrus’ stomach turned over, then flipped and flopped in all-out fright, and his heart took shelter behind his larynx, rabbiting like it was in a dead-heat race with the Devil. “Anyway, you’re letting all this ancient, over-and-done _shit_ drag you down for nothing, Vakarian! What went down, went down. We did what we had to do and it’s _over_ , now. Eye-Ay’s investigation proved what all of SRU already knew: SpecTRe’s got some rotten-goddamn-apples. If not for you and that maniac, Shepard, this city’d be in some real shit because of it, too.”

 

“Are you implying that the city’s _no longer_ in some real shit, regarding rogue SpecTRes?” Garrus had a white-knuckled death-grip on his seatbelt and his eyes were opened so wide, he was sure they’d fall out at any second. Bain was weaving from lane-to-lane, being rather selective about his blinker-use, and yes, yes, Garrus had learned to expect this disregard of safety _and_ road-rules from the very first time Bain had given him a ride home. But the rain and darkness and _rush hour_ just had a way of making even normal-bad seem horrifying. Or terrifying. Or both. With Bain at the wheel, it was frequently both. “We just barely managed to stop Saren from putting a bullet in Kryik’s hard skull. So, as far as I’m concerned, _he’s_ the only SpecTRe we can give a long lead. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. _He’s_ probably clean, but we have no way of being sure about the others. That’s a pretty damning assessment of the entire SpecTRe Unit, in my book.”

 

“Yeah, well, your book has too many fucking pages. Appendices and lexicons and footnotes—all that shit. Plus, there’re _way_ too many SAT-words,” Bain chastised, seemingly unconcerned with either his rate of speed or the reduced visibility caused by darkness and rain. Garrus stifled a groan and clutched at his seatbelt in hope and doubt. Mostly doubt. Having survived Saren Arterius _and_ getting shot in the face, Garrus fully expected to die while being chauffeured around by Bain. The frequency of such trips was sure to increase, now that Bain was his partner, thus making _death-by-Massani’s-shit-driving_ the most likely culprit in Garrus’s eventual untimely death. “In _my_ book, it’s obvious that there’s a lotta good in the SpecTRe Unit. Some bad, sure, but it really only takes one bad apple to spoil a pie, m’man.”

 

“The answer we _would_ have accepted for _Final Jeopardy,_ Mr. Massani, would have been _one bad apple to spoil a bunch_. The judges might also have accepted _barrel_.”

 

Bain huffed and actually signaled—briefly—before swerving across three lanes of traffic. Garrus closed his eyes very, very tight and tried to coax both heart and stomach from their hiding spots behind his larynx. “So, sue me, Vakarian. I eat my apples in pie- and Jolly Rancher-form, _not_ out of a fucking barrel. Unlike you, ya goddamn rube.”

 

“Don’t think I won’t shoot you in the face, Massani. You’ve got a _lotta_ face, so I wouldn’t even have to fuss over my aim.”

 

Bain guffawed. “Ah, you’re too smart to shoot _me_ in the face—ballistics’d trace it right back to your service weapon or your concealed-carry, straight off.”

 

“Who says the only guns I’ve got on me are my registered ones?”

 

Shooting him a surprised, brow-furrowed look, Bain—almost always by-the-books, despite his terrible road-habits and the whole Arterius mess—frowned. “You . . . have an _unregistered_ concealed-carry.”

 

“Yup.” Several, actually. Though Bain was really better-off not knowing exact quantities.

 

“And . . . you’ve got it on you, right now. Along with your service and _registered_ concealed-carry.”

 

“Ten-four, Pard.”

 

Bain mulled that over for a minute, still zig-zagging blithely through limited and rapidly closing spaces between other vehicles, back toward the right lane.  Garrus could see an exit ramp up ahead.

 

“Right. That’s. . . .” Bain sighed softly, wearily. “Right. Okay. Lemme guess, Vakarian: Yet another SIG Sauer.”

 

“I’m not saying it’s _not_ ,” Garrus replied, shrugging.

 

“Secretive fucking gun-nut. Jesus, you and Dad are gonna get along like a bloody house on fire. Or a house _under_ fire.”

 

Garrus’s brows shot up and he glanced at Bain curiously. “Your old man’s a fan of the Great Swedish Equalizers?”

 

“Eh. Not a huge one, but yeah. He’s big into shotguns and rifles, more than pistols. And, uh . . . he knows his way around modified semi- and fully-automatic weapons, too.” Bain’s voice sounded unusually high and nervous. Garrus glanced at him as they zoomed up the exit ramp, all but riding the tail-pipe of a dirty, blue beater ahead of them.

 

“Huh. What’s his stance on sniper-rifles?”

 

Bain groaned. “If ya got six hours and plenty of attention-span, he’ll tell ya, himself, if he’s at home. Though he likely won’t be, till late. But Dad’s opinions about weapons are almost all based on experience and use. He rarely makes sweeping generalizations or judgments about weapons he hasn’t personally tested. Or people. But _especially_ weapons. Hell, if you’re real attentive and appreciative, Vakarian, he might let ya lay hands on dear Jessie.”

 

“Uh.” Garrus blinked, nonplussed. Hoping that “Jessie” would turn out to be a cat or a cockatiel or a potted fern, he ventured: “For the record, I’m not interested in a shotgun wedding to your sister. . . .”

 

Bain laughed, loud and hard, pounding on the wheel as they shot off the ramp and onto the moderately traveled Route 16W. Ahead was the Silversun Strip Mall, brightly-lit and lively. “If I had a sister, she’d be _way_ too good for you. Naw, Jessie is Dad’s old rifle. About thirty-two different brands and models of gun Frankenstein’d into one bad-bitch assault rifle, by none other than Zaeed Massani, himself. Illegal as _fuck_ , but an outstanding and versatile field-weapon. She was Dad’s true love for close-on two decades.”

 

“Huh. Disturbing. And . . . impressive,” Garrus grudgingly admitted, intrigued, despite himself. Bain’d always talked about his father a lot—the hero-worship was _strong_ with that one—but mostly about his hobbies. And the quirky or slightly off-kilter ones, at that: cigars, history, whisky, wars, cars . . . baking. Bain had let slip once or twice that his father had some military experience and knew his way around weapons, but Garrus hadn’t expected quite this level of interest and expertise.

 

“Though, really, don’t hold your breath about getting your hands on Jessie, Stretch. Dad won’t even let _me_ hold his _true_ pride an’ joy.” Bain sounded like he was pouting and stifling more laughter.

 

“That’s fine.” Garrus patted the P226 sitting snug and ready in his shoulder-holster. He thought of the two concealed SIG P239s also on his person and within easy-reach; the Glock 26 and Smith & Wesson M&P Shield hidden in his duffle, and the disassembled Remington M-700 rifle and scope in their case . . . all in Bain’s immaculate trunk. Smiling out at the rainbow smears of sodden mall-light he sighed, relaxing a little for the first time all day. “I’ve got cleaning and oiling the pistols and calibrating the Remmy’s scope to help me feel complete.”

 

“Goddamn gun-nut _weirdos_ —you an’ Dad’ll be peases in podses, Vakarian,” Bain grumbled, then huffed, lead-footing it through a been-red light with no regard for the rest of the intersection. Nor for the irate sounds of horns and laid-down rubber that soon dwindled into the distance behind them. Nor for Garrus’s glares and further threats of face-shooting.

 

TBC


	2. TWO: A (Space-Age) Hacienda Away from Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bain and Garrus arrive at their home-away-from-home. Garrus fully expects to regret caving-in to Bain’s puppy-eyes and peer-pressuring to spend their Leave at the “Space-Age” Massani Hacienda, within a day. Probably less, even. He doesn’t, however, expect to awaken—less than two hours in—even as he instinctively draws his service weapon. _Nor_ does he expect to find a semi-automatic pistol aimed at his face, and a lunatic with facial scars and heterochromatic eyes at the other end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Smart-assery, dumbassery, snark and sarcasm, emotional baggage, mentions of dysfunctional-family dynamics, insomnia, implied PTSD, and main character threatened with a firearm.

Once out of the bright lights of the Silversun Strip, then off the main drag, Garrus relaxed further, even dozing into a slack-jawed half-sleep for the rest of the ride through the shabby-genteel wilds of Tayseri Ward.

 

Had he been more wakeful, he’d have noted the slackening of the rain and the thinning of the clouds, which revealed a cautiously starry sky and its sickle-moon. But Bain’s driving was smooth and for once not riddled with short stops, roaring starts, and sudden turns taken at full-speed. The older— _chronologically_ , anyway—man tooled unhurriedly through the Ward’s commercial and cultural center: a sanguinely diverse and vibrantly artsy hub that was dominated by the delicate, decaying grandeur of the Dilinaga Concert Hall, which sat at the head of the whimsically named  _Bohemian Mile_  of music venues, theaters, and galleries.

 

Bain was good enough to be uncharacteristically silent, but before Garrus knew it, he was being cheerfully punched awake. “Wakey-wakey, darling!”

 

“Burn. In.  _Hell_ , Massani,” Garrus grumbled, glaring at his partner between gritty-eyed blinks as he rubbed his smarting left bicep. Bain scoffed and closed his slightly-open window, then flicked the master lock/unlock.

 

“What? That little love-tap hurt my poor baby partner? The one who literally got  _shot in the fucking face_  three months ago? Who was then, less than two days later, up and about and terrorizing his doctors, nurses, and any other hospital staff who weren’t moving quickly enough in  _any_  other direction?” he cooed mockingly as he opened the driver’s side door. He then shoved himself out of his damned muscle-car with far too much energy, considering . . .  _everything ever_. He hooked the Pride gradient-colored carabiner from which dangled his keyfob, keys, and various club card tags—Bain sometimes spoke of places like Costco, Sears, and Buy-Town with the same near-religious yearning with which Bagginses spoke of the Shire, Hobbiton, and Bag End—into one of the loops of his fashionably fitted black jeans. Between those trendy jeans, his chrome-gray work-shirt (sleeves rolled haphazardly up to his elbows), and his expensive, imported boots, he looked like a model as he paused in the moony-starry air, fussing with the clutch of tags and keys.

 

Garrus—though wearing a nominally similar outfit of indifferently fitted, dark-blue, straight-leg jeans, a near-starched, pristine-white, button-down shirt (with  _both_  sleeves unrolled and buttoned), and new-looking running shoes—supposed he, himself, looked less like a model and more like a marginally animated mannequin selling mediocre fabric in unflattering patterns. His weird-wild, dark curls were grown-out and semi-frizzy around a pale, lividly scarred face that was all stubborn-prominent, hatchet-like features, and fuzzy, permanently furrowed brows over direct, ice-blue eyes.

 

Bain’s face was long, like Garrus’s, but far more attractive at it . . . more foxlike, than hatchet-like. His features were strong, but more refined than prominent, and his closely-shorn haircut accentuated them well. His dark, almond-shaped eyes were bracketed by attractive crow’s feet and his full, sensual mouth by smile lines. He gave an impression of dimples—when he grinned and even when he didn’t—though he didn’t have them.

 

Garrus, however,  _did_  have dimples—though, since getting shot in the face, it was just  _dimple_ —yet gave the impression of frowning even while he was smiling. Or laughing. Or eating. Or sleeping, so Bain claimed. Garrus had never seen the point of disagreeing since he’d been hearing versions of the same thing since kindergarten era nap-times.

 

He frowned now—the scarred, right bottom-half of his face pulled and ached and fought the expression, as it did all his other facial expressions—and levered himself painstakingly out of Bain’s charger. The air was still a bit humid and chilly, but the street and sidewalk seemed dry enough, as did the Massani driveway and front walk. Bain had parked on the street, just past the empty driveway.

 

“Don’t wanna get hemmed in by Dad, when he gets home. I might wanna go on a supply run in the morning, y’know? Vodka, Marshmallow Choco-Bombs, and seventy-five bucks worth of lotto scratch-offs,” Bain said from the back of the Charger, where he was removing his bags, Garrus’s duffle, and the Remmy in its large, padded case. Garrus chuckled and went to accept both duffle and heavy case from his dramatically wincing partner.

 

“The staples of a healthy lifestyle. Unh. Thanks, Massani.”

 

“Thank me by paying my chiropractor.”

 

“. . . no.”

 

Bain barked a laugh and shut the trunk with a gentle slam, then patted it fondly. “C’mon, cheapskate, let’s get settled in, yeah?”

 

“Sure.” Garrus glanced over at The Hacienda. It was a modern-looking split-level that gave the impression of being smaller than it actually was, painted jaunty-vivid salmon with shingling as stark-white as Garrus’ shirt. The shutters on the ground-level windows were an intense, aggressive green that matched whatever species of grass comprised the perfectly-maintained lawn. “Does your father realize this house isn’t in Miami, or the Keys?”

 

Bain snorted. “Nope! And I haven’t the heart to break it to the old geezer, either! On we go, Vakarian: age before beauty!”

 

Garrus continued to stare up at the house—it was on a gradual incline—in bemusement until Bain strode past him briskly, with barely a pause for elbowing, and murmuring: “Or pearls before swine works, too.”

 

Rolling his eyes, Garrus shouldered his duffle, hefted the Remmy’s case, and followed his partner up The Hacienda’s clean, cobbled walk.

 

#

 

“Dad likes space-age shit, no doubt—has  _all_  the bloody mod-cons, and then some, as you can see. But he’s also very fond of the classics.”

 

Garrus stood in the entryway just off the brief foyer and hall near the front door. Across from that entryway had been another, which let into a big kitchen lit only by a gentle night-light over the stove. He’d barely glanced in before Bain had flicked the light-switch for the large main room and Garrus had automatically turned. Then he’d gaped.

 

Then he’d staggered into the room to stand at Bain’s side.

 

Then he’d gaped some more.

 

A minute later, he was still gaping.

 

The room was huge and boasted a gleaming, hardwood floor. It was decorated accordingly with very large, sturdy-comfortable furniture and accents, in earthy-sedate shades. Dominating the corner to Garrus’s left was a huge, mousse-colored sofa and sectional, with a matching recliner and some complimentary chairs, at the center of which was a ridiculously large curving television in a free-standing entertainment center. Garrus could make out several new and late-model gaming consoles.

 

To Garrus’s and Bain’s right and against the wall, were shelves with books, photos, random knick-knacks, a streamlined sound-system that included speakers, and . . . several commemorative plate-sets.

 

But what had really caught Garrus’s eye—and made him gape until the scars pulled sulkily—was the other half of the room, directly across from the relatively normal space in which he and Bain stood.

 

“The classics . . . right. Is that . . .  _Relay Defense_? And  _Shattered EEZO_?” Garrus demanded, absolutely dumbfounded in his shock as he shuffled most of the way across the large, spacious room, toward the impressive personal arcade that took up the entire west side of The Hacienda’s main room. His eyes darted to and fro among the aforementioned classics, then among arcade versions of even classic-er classics, including  _Pacman_ ,  _Pong_ , and. . . . “Fuck me, Freddie, is that  _Towers of Hanoi_?”

 

Bain chuckled. “Tis, indeed, my gobstruck bestest.”

 

“Holy mother of Metroid, Bain,” Garrus said absently, his wide eyes dancing among the nine arcade-style systems of various sizes, backed up against the wall and between tall, narrow windows. He shook his head in awe and disbelief as his gaze landed on the centerpiece of this personal arcade. The hugest, most colorful and cumbersome-looking game of all, it was swaddled in day-glo-on-black plastic housing and festooned with lights, and all but drew Garrus’s tired self to it like a siren. “Is that an original, coin-operated  _Plink’O!_  set-up? With the original joysticks, pedals, and motion-sensors?”

 

‘You just went up five extra rungs in my estimation, Stretch,” Bain said with pleased and surprised amusement. “Dad got it back at the height of the bloody craze, y’know? First edition—and ostensibly a gift for his eleven years old son. I think I got to play it for twenty minutes on my birthday, after I nearly died of exhaustion unwrapping it. Made the mistake of going to the loo and when I came out, Dad had taken over the damned thing. By the time his interest in  _Plink’O!_ waned, I’d discovered it was much more fun shoving my hands down my pants than playing incomprehensible digital pinball, that’d mixed in car-chases, scavenger hunts, and near-impossible-to-solve spatial puzzles.”

 

“Ick,” Garrus said around a stifled yawn that was more of an automatic response to Bain’s typical TMI than it was an actual complaint. After nearly three years, he was used to his best friend’s lack of shame and discretion. “Doesn’t  _Plink’O!_  have a multiplayer setting?”

 

“ _Groups of two, three, four, or more!_  as is emblazoned on the side of this ancient Shrine to Early Digital Innovation,” Bain agreed peppily. “But Dad used to say even he wasn’t enough of an arsehole to make his own kid cry over an arcade game.”

 

Garrus snorted. “That’s . . . uncommonly wise and considerate parenting. And better than taking a dive just to give a kid confidence that hasn’t been earned and isn’t backed up by learned and honed skill.”

 

“Right?” Bain clapped Garrus’s back and chuckled. “Dad was a fucking  _beast_  on that thing and a lot of other arcade games, too. He an’ I’ve bonded over a bunch of cool, fun things since fate tossed us together, but I know to steer clear of him when he’s in his arcade-domination mood.”

 

“Acknowledgement of and respect for boundaries are integral parts of a healthy father-son relationship, I would imagine,” Garrus said, resolutely not thinking of his own family and parents—his father, especially. Not that he usually had the strength to deal with that strenuous and winding road, but tonight, he felt even less prepared or inclined to deal.

 

“You imagine?”

 

When Garrus glanced over at his partner, Bain was watching him with gentle and patient curiosity that wasn’t prying or pressuring. Since the beginning of their tenure as friends and cohorts—and even roommates for six months, after Garrus had lost his old apartment—Garrus had only ever stopped being totally close-mouthed about his family when three sheets to the wind. And even that opening-up was only  _relative_  to his demurring and often stony refusal to talk about his past, while sober.

 

As it stood, Bain only knew from Garrus that he had a family that included a sister, and that said family lived in Palaven Heights, a good couple of hours from the Citadel.

 

Now, Garrus grimace-smiled—complete with more wincing from the recalcitrant pull and fight of his scars—crooked and tired, at Bain’s kind, waiting, but wry expression. “Do I strike you as someone who has  _a_  relationship with his father, Massani? Let alone a healthy one?”

 

“Not even a little,” Bain admitted without pause or pity, and Garrus chuckled tiredly. But at least the chuckle lacked most of the bitterness it might have been dripping with even a year ago.

 

Then it turned into another yawn, but this one he couldn’t stifle. Bain made a face and clapped him on the shoulder, this time.

 

“I take it I’m not the only one who’s dead on his feet, after today.”

 

“I dunno how I’m still upright,” Garrus confessed, glancing back at the huge, mousse-colored sofa. “’S’at my bunk for the duration of my stay?” he asked, re-shouldering his duffle more firmly and clutching the Remmy’s case while drifting sofa-ward. “I’m not complaining, if it is. It looks much more comfortable than my damn bed.”

 

“Yeah, well, too bad you’ve bonded with the sofa. You’re getting the guest-room. Nothing but the best and most formal lodgings, for  _my_  Garry-pants.”

 

“I’m also okay with emptying a clip into the back of your enormous skull,” Garrus informed Bain as he followed him toward a narrow entryway at the back of the room, but with one last look at the  _Plink’O!_  then the sofa. The entryway let into a brief hall-like span that curved around the back of the main room and inclined upwards as it did. It was carpeted in heather-gray medium-pile.

 

The top of this curving and carpeted incline let into an  _actual_  corridor with six doors. Here, the carpeting was a soothing gray-green.

 

“Hall storage closet,” Bain said, pointing at the first closed door to the left. Then across from it, a closed door which he then hurried to open, then gestured for Garrus to look inside. Neither large nor small, and leaning more toward cozy than impersonal, the room possessed a neatly-made bed, night table, bureau, desk—with a thirty-two-inch flatscreen television on it—and chair, and a tall standing-fan in the corner to the right of the room’s large window and its half-shut blinds. The curtains framing said window were white and diaphanous, and nearly touched that gray-green carpet.

 

“Your room, while you’re in-residence, chum. Nice, comfy space-age mattress and 4K telly—the fan’s also space-age and programmable. Has a timer and remote, and everything. As do the blinds. They’re  _super_  space-age. There’s a small remote for them, as well. Seriously, your night table has, like, fifteen different remotes on it. Enjoy sorting out which clicker goes to which gadget, yeah? Hmm, lessee, what else?” Bain hummed for a few moments, then shrugged. “Eh, can’t think of anything. Oh—the room doesn’t get much sun till nearly noon—it’s like a bloody cave most of the day, really.”

 

“I’ve seen this  _sun_  you speak of, Bain,” Garrus deadpanned, setting the Remmy’s case down just to the right of the door, along with his duffle. “Can’t say I’m a fan.”

 

“This is also a thing I knew about you, Vakarian.” Bain lightly poked Garrus in the small of his back, then ducked back out into the hall, gesturing for Garrus to follow when he turned and glared. Bain pointed to the next door on the right side of the hall, which was also open. “That’s me, and after that is Dad’s, er, hmm, arms-room. It’s code-locked— _extremely_  space-age and secure—so, if you wanna keep  _your_  guns in there for the duration, keep ‘em from gettin’ lonely and give ‘em new friends to chat with—”

 

“They enjoy solitude and silence,” Garrus declined serenely, smiling just enough that the scar tissue gave petulant twinges, but no real discomfort. He’d brought his strong, prescribed painkillers with him to The Hacienda—Bain had made him fill the damned prescription at the hospital’s pharmacy after he’d gotten discharged—along with his few other meds. But he had no plans to start using the painkillers while here, if it could be helped.

 

And it likely could be. He hadn’t bothered to take them once, even right after the hospital, and on nights when the ache and burn had made it impossible to drift off for more than a quarter of an hour at a time—never mind  _actual unconsciousness_ —without waking up sweaty, weeping, and disoriented. He doubted he’d need to start anesthetizing  _now_.

 

“I’ll keep my arsenal within arms’-reach, if you don’t mind. But thanks,” he added, with amused, but sincere graciousness, and his partner sighed eloquently.

 

“Ugh. Figures. You may actually be  _more_  of a gun-weirdo than Dad. You two are gonna be joined at the trigger-finger, I’m sure.” Bain was probably rolling his eyes in utter exasperation and that made Garrus test the scar tissue a little further. “Anyway, across from the gun-room is the upstairs loo. Between the loo and the hall closet is Dad’s room. He, too, isn’t much of a morning person. And he snores like six lumber-mills about to shit the bed. So, if you wake up in the middle of the night to the most godawful racket you’ve ever heard, coming at regular, breathing-like intervals . . . Dad’s got home, and he’s gone to bed.”

 

“Like son, like father,” Garrus noted, though he doubted he’d manage to close his eyes before four a.m. He’d been battling insomnia for most of his life, though more desperately since he was seventeen. Getting actual rest even in his own bed was a rarity. In an unfamiliar bed, he could only imagine he’d be seeing the sunrise before his tired eyes and mind gave-in and let him either black-out or at least drift into sweet auxiliary-mode for an hour or two.

 

“And in the morning . . . or early afternoon, considering it’s  _you night-owls_ , I’ll introduce the two grimmest, meanest arseholes I know. Then smugly smile while they geek out over firearms and World Wars and ways to best frighten neighborhood children into staying off the goddamn lawn.”

 

“. . . that was one time, Massani.” Garrus cleared his throat as his face heated.

 

“But it wasn’t even  _your lawn_ , Vakarian.”

 

“Principles don’t stop being principles just because  _I_  don’t own the lawn under discussion.” A beat. “Also, Vega’s neighbors have awful— _noise ordinance-violating_ —children.  _Someone_  had to call out their unacceptable behavior.”

 

“You . . . have a problem, Garrus—several, actually—and you need to admit it. Don’t be ashamed: you’re amongst friends.  _Friends_ , meaning your three hundred and twelve illegal-carries, of course.”

 

“I’d punch you in the face, but I’m exhausted. And I don’t want to shatter my fist on your cement-lined cranium.” Garrus yawned again. Bain smiled and patted him in the center of the back, before shoving him toward the guest-room once more.

 

“Go on, then. Seek your space-age rest,  _Detective, first-grade_ , and Godspeed!”

 

Garrus rolled his eyes and paused with one foot past the threshold of the room, just before half-turning toward his grinning partner again. “Just because you make ‘space-age’ a prefix for  _everything_ , it _doesn’t_  make stuff sound futuristic and  _cool_ , Bain.”

 

Bain’s charming-bright grin widened impossibly, and his dark-bright _eyes_ twinkled like the night sky. “Oh, doesn’t it? Are you  _space-age certain_  of that, Garrus?”

 

Too weary and disgusted to even heave his usual heavy, pointedly put-upon sigh, Garrus simply shook his head and showed Bain his back. “Right. G’night, Massani.”

 

“Sweet dreams, Vakarian.” Bain chuckled as he strode off toward his bedroom.

 

#

 

In spite of himself, Garrus was deep in auxiliary-mode in minutes.

 

He hadn’t even unpacked, nor moved his duffle and the Remmy-case from near the still widely-ajar door. He’d sat to test the bed, found it  _more than_  acceptable, and slumped a bit letting tension drain. He’d been trying to gather his umpteenth wind for unpacking, settling, and maybe cable news-watching until his gritty-burning eyes shut. Assuming they would at all.

 

He didn’t even realize he’d flopped back into the firm—but gently so—space-age mattress. Didn’t realize he’d eased his six-foot-four frame up the bed, until his head was but an inch or three beyond the pillows and headboard, and only his feet, his ankles, and the bottom-third of his calves were hanging off the foot.

 

He didn’t know he was  _sleeping,_  and far more soundly than he had in nearly a decade. Then that secure and restful darkness was slingshot away by the discomfiting, alarming sensation—the gut-level, reptile-brain  _certainty_ —that he was being watched.

 

Garrus became fully, intensely  _aware_ , and awake. He was already reaching for his service weapon, which was still holstered under his left arm. His tired eyes flew open a split-second before his fingertips even brushed the butt of the SIG P226, focusing first on two eyes not far from his own. They were reddened and weary—one ice-gray and similar in shade to Garrus’s own ice-blue, and the other a gimlet green—but fixed on Garrus. They  _pinned him in place_  like a bug to a board.

 

The gray eye was set in an old, pale network of scarring that took up and skewed almost the entire right side of a rugged, expressionless—vaguely familiar—face.

 

Between  _that_  collection of keen features and old scars, and  _Garrus’s own_  collection of keen features and  _new_  scars, was a rock-steady pistol: deadly, sleek, and with its silencer-adorned muzzle centered right between Garrus’s wide-awake eyes.

 

TBC


	3. THREE: Pistols—and Manners—at Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Garrus met Zaeed (there’re also several guns present, but none of them are Jessie).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Insomnia, implied PTSD, and main character threatened with a firearm. Altered mental states due to exhaustion. Mentions of recent injury/healing/pain. Some angst and bonding over angsty pasts. Implied friendships and past relationships.

“Did I disturb your beauty-rest? Goddamned rude of me,” the striking face noted dryly. Not to mention in a hoarse-rough voice with a less-than-posh English accent that was _very_ familiar, if rather thicker than Garrus was used to.

 

“Um. Mr. Massani—” Garrus half-asked, then swallowed reflexively. The deadly-keen face beyond the unwavering muzzle-brake—the unscarred side of it, anyway—quirked in an easy, oddly charming smirk that made Garrus’s half-question instantly unnecessary.

 

It was _Bain’s_ smirk, only . . . _Bain-ier_ than Bain’s smirk had ever dreamed of being.

 

“No flies on you, are there? Hand away from the SIG, or I’ll haveta put a bullet between those pretty eyes, yeah?” Mr. Massani warned in that same rough-conversational tone, not lowering the pistol by even a micron.

 

Garrus froze, then when Mr. Massani didn’t move either to plug him or prompt him to move in any way, let his hand drift slowly, steadily away from the SIG with fingers splayed and stiff. Still.

 

“Aw, ain’t that cooperative of you? Don’t often see that sorta consideration from intruders—especially the ones with enough brass to break in and make themselves at home in the guest room. Proper little choir-boy, you are,” Mr. Massani’s smirk widened and he took a few careful steps away from the bed, neither gaze nor pistol—an FNS-40 Compact, if Garrus wasn’t mistaken—wavering. Garrus followed his progress with wide eyes, not even daring to turn his head slightly to keep a bead on the man. Despite the icy-steadiness of him, Mr. Massani seemed more wired-edgy-nervous, than rested and ready.

 

Deciding that both caution _and_ his best effort not to startle or rattle an exhausted gun-owner were called for, Garrus swallowed again. “Ah. I’m not an intruder, sir, and I can explain my presence—”

 

“Can you, now? Let’s hear it, then.” Mr. Massani didn’t even blink. And he still didn’t lower the pistol. “I like that _sir_ , though. Manners always goes a long way. Not necessarily with _me_ , but I do look a _bit_ kinder on criminals who keep my nicely-toned arse well-kissed, too.”

 

That was enough to startle a nervous laugh out of Garrus, brief and cough-like. And he instantly regretted it when Mr. Massani’s finger on the trigger tightened almost imperceptibly. _Almost_. “ _Please, don’t_. I’ve already been shot in the face once this year. I’m not looking for a repeat,” he said, surprised at how exhausted and done-in it sounded.

 

How exhausted and done-in he _felt_.

 

Mr. Massani’s brow furrowed for more than a moment, but not quite two. Then it cleared, and the FNS-40 practically vanished before Garrus’s eyes, with a discreet click that meant the safety was on. Mr. Massani—having stashed the pistol behind his back, in the waistband of his black jeans—crossed his arms and now-empty hands over his chest and grinned before Garrus could be surprised, let alone relieved.

 

“Right, fuck,” Bain’s father said, still rough and conversational, but weirdly warm, rather than flat and cold. “Sorry ‘bout that. Can’t be too careful. You’d be Bain’s new partner, right? _The_ Detective First-Grade Garrus Vakarian?” Mr. Massani ran his gaze down the length of Garrus, then right back up, ending at his eyes, his own mismatched ones bright with bemusement. “Well, Bain said you were _tall_ , but buh-loody- _hell_ , for once the boy was under-exaggeratin’, Stretch!”

 

As Mr. Massani chuckled, quiet and gravelly, surprise and relief hit Garrus at the same time, as well as incredulity and mild annoyance. Because, _of course_ , Bain would not only tell his father Garrus’s unasked-for nickname, but _of course_ —being the father of the most annoyingly, irreverently inappropriate and often irrelevant man in the tri-county area—Bain’s father had _remembered_ that nickname. And right after connecting Garrus’s height and the whole _being shot in the face-thing_ , to realize that this unexpected intruder was none other than his son’s partner . . . _Stretch_.

 

Garrus sighed, closing his eyes for a moment, and calling his partner all kinds of immature idiot and exasperating asshole. “So, am I allowed to sit up, now, Mr. Massani? Or would I be asking for that bullet between the eyes?”

 

Another coarse-hoarse chuckle, still amused, but drained in a way that spoke of an exhaustion similar to Garrus’s. When he opened his eyes, Mr. Massani was half-turned toward the dresser, yawning, stretching, and rubbing the back of his neck as if it ached.

 

“Considering you recently took a bullet to the face while saving the life of Nihlus Kryik, one of the best goddamn people I’ve ever known— _and_ you’ve been a true friend and partner to _my boy_ for nearly three years—you can dance a goddamn jig all over my ugly mug, if you want, Detective-First-Grade Stretch. Not like you’d be ruinin’ scenery, if you did,” he said, halfway through his titanic yawn and joint-popping stretch. When his tired gaze finally lighted on Garrus again, unhurried, but assessing, his expression settled into a wry, difficult to pin-down smile, rather than a smirk. “And _Mr. Massani’s_ that goddamn knucklehead the SRU shackled you to yesterday morning. _I’m_ just _Zaeed_. At least to you.”

 

He held out his hand to Garrus, who was sitting up slowly, more in deference to the no doubt quick draw of his host, rather than any lingering stiffness or sluggishness. When his shoes touched the floor, Garrus studied the hand briefly—it looked, as everything about Mr. Massani seemed to be, rough and care-worn . . . callused and hard—then blinked up at its waiting owner. Mr. Massani’s heterochromatic, gray-and-green eyes were still bright, despite the glaze of weariness and wired-tired focus leavening his approving stare. In the pale-stark moonlight that illuminated the room, he looked pale and brittle-strong, his scarred face as mutable as marble.

 

But that smile . . . it was still wry and a little mischievous.

 

“And hopefully, I can be _Garrus_ to you, Mist—Zaeed,” Garrus amended pointedly, his brows twitching upward, but only very slightly. He took _Zaeed’s_ hand, smiling when it was as firm and dry as expected. Just like Bain’s grip. Garrus’s own hands tended to always be cool and vaguely clammy, or just plain corpse-like in both temperature and moistness. Thankfully, his hand was just cool, tonight.

 

Zaaed’s smile widened and his eyes seemed to twinkle merrily, despite the obvious tiredness of the rest of him. “Hint taken. I’ll be sure to stick with _Garrus_ and leave ‘Stretch’ for _Bain’s_ rude-goddamn-arse to use. Dunno where that boy gets his bloody cheek from.”

 

“A mystery for the ages,” Garrus agreed dryly. Then he winced as his face instinctively attempted a right-crooking smirk and the right side—always achy—gathered and bunched, and the attendant nerve-endings let out a low-level shriek of pain.

 

He thought he was hiding it superbly until Zaeed stepped closer, graceful and nonthreatening—too fast for Garrus to startle. Which he otherwise might have when it came to someone who was so fluid-fast with both the weapon he carried and the weapon he _was_.

 

But before Garrus could startle reflexively or pull away, Zaeed Massani had placed two callused fingertips under Garrus’s chin and tilted his face up and to the left. Those keen, gray-and-green eyes studied the right side of Garrus’s face closely.

 

“Must’ve hurt like a sonuvawhore,” he noted, half-admiration, half-commiseration. Garrus merely smiled, measured and bland, and didn’t shove Zaeed’s hand away _or_ turn his face away. On the overheated, still-healing tissue and skin of Garrus’s face, that light, almost perfunctory touch was startling, familiar, and low-key thrilling.

 

“It, ah . . . wasn’t a day at Disney World, no,” Garrus confirmed as Zaeed’s thumb brushed along the prominent-stark contour of his chin and aching jaw.

 

“Yeeeeeeah. Don’t help that you’re not the sort to take his painkillers like a good little patient, eh?”

 

Garrus blinked and shuddered perceptibly as Zaeed’s thumb-tip drifted across the sensitive-numb skin grafted along his jaw and below his cheek—still raw and shiny and _odd_ -looking, compared to the skin on the other three-quarters of Garrus’s face—to linger at the hinge, then drift down his throat for a a few moments, before dropping away altogether. That did nothing to halt or even slow the thrilled-confused-burning nerves left in their wake . . . nor in the racing-roused sensation spreading through rest of Garrus’s now _very_ alert body. “How do you, ah, know what kind of patient I am? Has Bain been telling tales out of school?”

 

“Naw. But _I’m_ a bad patient, myself, Garrus. Goddamned _terrible_. And we terrible patients can always smell our own.” Now, that smile was slipping back into smirk territory and Garrus shivered minutely as the very recent memory of Zaeed’s gentle-rough touch continued to light-up and electrify every inch of his skin, not just his damaged, lower-right face. Zaeed’s commiserative smirk faded, and his eyes narrowed as if he’d almost caught the shiver and wasn’t entirely certain he’d seen anything at all. “Ahhh. Anyway. I take it your presence at The Hacienda means my spawn’s here, too? I couldn’t hear him sawin’ logs on my way up the front walk, as is so often the case when he visits.”

 

Garrus smiled, limp and uncertain, and manufactured a polite chuckle as that alertness began to fade at speed. He was starting to feel ridiculously heavy now that the threat, such as it had been, had passed. It was a light-speed crash of the more-than-minimal, waking sluggishness that had been forced aside by his instinctive red-alert from the sensation of being watched. His cycling down from that urgent-alert state was manifesting as that heaviness, some slight disorientation, and the usual wired-buzzing exhaustion Garrus had lived with on-and-off for twenty-six frequently insomniac years.

 

Despite the presence of another person—an _armed one_ , whom he didn’t really _know_ —his body’s desperate fatigue and its need to at least blank-out and coast on auxiliary for a couple hours was land-sliding on him. And with all the mercy of boulders at the top of a steep incline, during a seismic event.

 

“Garrus?”

 

“Mm?” Blinking lethargically up at an attentive Zaeed, Garrus frowned a little. “Ah. Apologies, Zaeed. I . . . went walk-about for a few moments.”

 

Zaeed’s brows shot up and his smile became that familiar—apparently genetic—smug smirk: crooked and a bit jarring on such a scarred face, but still strangely boyish. _Charming and rakish_ , in a gut-punch way that one might not expect from such a scarred and weathered visage. “A few moments? Try the better part of two minutes—bloody-fucking- _hell_ , you’re going walk-about, _again, as I watch._ It’s fucking _eerie_ how quick you check-out on a fella! Earth to Detective Vakarian?”

 

Startled back to a semblance of alertness and mindfulness, Garrus blinked again, and flushed when Zaeed’s smirk acquired hints of sardonic amusement and commiserative knowing. “Ahhh—my apologies again, Mist—Zaeed. Sorry. I’m . . . a little distracted.” Garrus looked down at his bony-big knees, and his hands resting to either side of them. They weren’t tremoring or shaking. Yet. But Garrus knew from experience that if he didn’t either blank or sleep, he’d be useless for anything requiring manual dexterity or steady, keen vision until he finally dropped wherever he stood or sat. He was already mentally detaching and starting to free-fall out of his usual mindfulness and caution. A forced blank-out was probably closer than even he supposed.

 

That sort of collapse hadn’t happened in almost a year—not since just before he’d lost his old place, moved in with Bain for five months, then had finally found his current place—but that just meant Garrus was long overdue. And when next the insomnia drove him to collapse, that collapse would come with interest and stick around for the long-haul.

 

“ _Distracted_ , my sainted, left bollock,” Zaeed scoffed in a dismissive, but once again concerned rumble. His weather-beaten brow furrowed as he and the world went a bit sideways. Realizing it wasn’t the world, but himself listing to the left—a realization which came slowly and settled in even _more_ slowly—Garrus flushed, frowned, and looked away from Zaeed’s now unleavened concern. “Christ on his space-age rocket-throne—best you lie down before you _fall_ down! Right off the goddamn-fucking-bed, too!”

 

Squinting up at Zaeed once more—the man’s face and tone were grim, despite his casual words, and wary, as if he thought Garrus might suddenly stroke-out and expire right before his eyes— _Garrus_ smirked. Or tried. It was doubtlessly ghoulish and doofy, with the way the shiny-skinned, right-half of his face pulled and the blinky-ness of his stupidly round (probably reddened) eyes.

 

“Where were _you_ all those nights I’d’ve _killed_ to be ordered into bed by a badass DILF?” Garrus wondered around a huge, prolonged yawn that left him feeling relaxed and drained and strangely content. His brain was already stalking the hinterlands of Blank-Out Land, having gone straight past auxiliary-mode. His flesh, used to operating on the mere fumes of actual energy, was wired-willing. But his mind . . . was almost completely checked-out for probably the next twelve hours.

 

For once, the idea of another dead-to-the-world collapse sounded desirable, rather than like a vaguely horrifying and unfortunately unstoppable— _necessary_ —evil.

 

Garrus didn’t even realize his eyes had shut until light once more pierced the aching, red-black darkness of his opening lids. He gazed muzzily into Zaeed’s scarred, worried-amused face. Then at the ceiling as hands, and a grip that was competent and businesslike—but gentle . . . in a commanding sort of way—urged his legs up onto the mattress.

 

 _I’m prone. How’d that happen?_ Garrus pondered belatedly, after several molasses-slow seconds oozed by. Then he grinned—probably gruesomely—up at Zaeed, who was muttering to himself as he fussily tugged the coverlet out from under Garrus.

 

“Shifting even just the legs-half of you’s like shifting pliant cement! For such a lean bastard, you weigh a ton,” he noted with a terse grunt and final yank. Then, he tossed the coverlet over Garrus. It was cool and light and smelled faintly of some floral fabric softener. Still grinning, Garrus hummed and practically purred, stretching under the cool material.

 

Zaeed moved back into Garrus’s line-of-sight and watched him, with arms akimbo like Yul Brenner. His heterochromatic gaze remained steady on Garrus’s face. As the eye-contact held, Garrus’s grin slipped and fell, then slinked off for points unknown.

 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, closing his eyes and turning his face away, to the left, even though that only exposed his scarred right cheek and jaw even more to Zaeed’s observation. But Garrus had never been one to ease bandages off. Better to get whatever staring, disgust, and pity were in the offing out of the way _now_. While the burn-ache of his whole face was extremely distracting, and not just because the nerve-endings attached to the skin, muscle, and bone of a quarter of it felt as if they’d been doused in kerosene then set ablaze.

 

“What’ve _you_ got to be sorry for, Detective?” Zaeed asked, rough-gentle-kind. So quiet and soft and soothing, just like the callused fingertips that brushed along the sharp line of Garrus’s jaw again, feathery-cool. For that few seconds, anyway, it was the best and sweetest relief of Garrus’s entire life. “You’re a goddamned _hero_ . . . what’s a _hero_ got to be sorry for?”

 

“Everything? I dunno, maybe just a lot,” Garrus said, sighing and sad, his voice slightly hoarse but otherwise flat and emotionless. After squinching his eyes tightly for a minute, he opened them and turned their dry-spacy stare, and his dry-wrecked face toward Zaeed again. In the stark light-dark of the moonlit guest room, the other man looked like the statue of a battered but forgiving deity: _The God of Remembrance, Regrets, and Hindsight_ , perhaps.

 

Garrus swallowed hard and repeatedly around a throat that ached and ticked, forcing and winching open eyelids that seemed to have the weight of worlds dangling from each lash. “Dunno anything, anymore. Maybe I never did. But I’m still sorry,” he repeated, not-so-suddenly distraught, confused, and—most of all—lost and lonely. And _tired_ of being lost and lonely. “I wanted to _atone_. To make everything to go _right_ , for once. Even if only for a little while. But I _can’t_ . . . and no one can _tell me how_. Or even tell me how to make it _better_. . . .”

 

And though Garrus wanted, more than anything, to shut out the compassion and understanding in Zaeed’s eyes, he dared not close his own even to blink. Not now. Not when he knew he’d see the first big and tragic mistake of his life, waiting there with troubled, dark eyes and a pained grimace of a smile.

 

Or, even worse, somehow—selfishly so—his _second_ big mistake: possessed of those same troubled, dark eyes and a grave-fond, world-weary smile Garrus had, by the end, done _any damned thing_ to tease out.

 

The last thing Garrus needed to see on the backs of his burning, worn-out eyelids, was Tarquin _or_ Adrien Victus. The _last_ thing Garrus needed was to be reminded of the boy he _hadn’t_ been able to save . . . or the man who hadn’t been able to save _him_.

 

Or simply hadn’t cared to.

 

Despite the hard-won habits of eight years, Garrus closed his eyes anyway. _Neither_ Victus was featured on the depthless void. For once, there was nothing at all . . . and Garrus wasn’t certain that nothing wasn’t ten thousand times worse than the agony of his dead-and-done past.

 

“Loath, though I am, to be yet someone else who don’t know _that_ secret to share it with you, Detective Garrus,” Zaeed began slowly, still so rough and gentle and warmer than sunshine in July. When Garrus struggled his eyes open a crack, Zaeed quirked a wry, absent smirk, his gaze drifting to the window. The smirk faded as he sat heavily on the bed. “I won’t lie and say that in twenty years, you’ll have found anything like a goddamn answer. Let alone peace. Not sayin’ you _won’t_ , either, just that . . . damn-near no one _I’ve_ ever known has. But then, I mostly know a bunch of mean, _shady_ arseholes like myself. Aside from a few notable exceptions, such as my changeling-son, Mr. Bloody-Law-and-Order Kryik . . . and _you_ , I suppose.” Zaeed’s Adam’s apple bobbed a little and his smirk twitched downward. “We’re all haunted-goddamn-houses, complete with skellies in the closets and ghosts in the attic. And fucking demons lurkin’ about in every corner. . . .”

 

Zaeed trailed off, his smirk completely gone. But Garrus could feel the warmth of the other man’s body—the wired-weary thrum of it against his hip and upper thigh. Then the bright-focus of Zaeed’s regard when it returned, lingering not at Garrus’s scarred and grafted right face, but at his eyes. Then, Zaeed smiled again, and winked roguishly. The cool-callused fingertips of his right hand brushed Garrus’s cheek yet again, and with unself-conscious tenderness that Garrus leaned into without thought or hesitation. Lazily and unhurriedly _nuzzled_ into like a drunken kitten.

 

Then, the soothing-galvanizing touch disappeared again, occasioning a petulant moan Garrus barely recognized as belonging to himself.

 

“Fifty-one years knockin’ ‘round this rubbish-ball planet, fucking around, fucking shit up, and bein’ in over my fucking head . . . _I_ dunno shite-all about atonement, Garrus. Just a little about forgiveness. Far as I can tell, there ain’t no atonement for havin’ done bad shit. You done what you done, and short of a time-machine, that’s that. But there _is_ _forgiveness_. Bain showed me that.” Zaeed’s eyes drifted to the window again, and though both sides of his face were pulled down in a frown once more, the scarred side was pulled down twice as noticeably. “He’s _been_ showin’ me for twenty-one years, now. That’s . . . _he’s_ been the blessing of my goddamn life, that boy. I didn’t earn him, and I’ll never _deserve_ him . . . but I’ve got him, anyway. So do you. We’re lucky arseholes, like that, Detective.”

 

“Yup.” Garrus agreed then smiled a just a tiny bit. “Bain’s a good man. _His own man_ . . . but he still must’ve had a solid example for what a good man should be.”

 

“I dunno about _that_ , ha! But he turned out more than all right, considering,” Zaeed mused, with slightly dismayed wonder. Then he snorted. “But my point was: Bain once told me something that summed up atonement and forgiveness for me. He said that all the atonement in the world ain’t for _shite_ if the few people who really count can’t or won’t _let you_ atone. Or let _themselves_ forgive. And if either the forgiveness or atonement is contingent on the other, then _neither_ blows anyone any goddamn good.” His voice went quiet, almost mumbling, and weighed-down. Then he cleared his throat and shrugged and smirked. “Anyway, the boy walks that talk boldly, without excuses or flinching, every goddamn day. He’s the first to forgive mistakes, whether they’re atoned for or not, whether that person _deserves_ forgiveness or not. Dunno _how_ he turned out so confoundin’ _pure of heart_ with his mum and I for role models.”

 

Garrus found himself smiling without noticing the attendant pain. The only thing he noticed was the lightening of some of the shadows in his mind. Around and in his _heart_. “I think . . . _I know_ , now, exactly where Bain gets that miles-wide streak of kindness and patience from.”

 

That inspired another snort and the cynical rolling of those gray-and-green eyes. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me, Detective Garrus.”

 

It wasn’t said unkindly—not exactly—but rather ruefully and with frustration Garrus couldn’t parse. And though normally he might have taken the hint and changed the subject, or let the conversation end, full-stop, Garrus actually grinned. His eyelids were even more burn-y than his face, with their need to close, but he kept them open and focused on Zaeed’s stoic face. “I know a few things. Not much. But I know _Bain_. And I know _that_ kind of special and good doesn’t randomly form in a vacuum.”

 

“ _Entire universes_ randomly form in vacuums, according to an issue of _Scientific American_ I once thumbed through. . . .”

 

“ _Just take the fucking compliment, Massani._ Jeez,” Garrus managed around a titanic yawn. When it was done, Zaeed was still chuckling and shaking his head, his gaze trained out the window and on the night. Mirth and laughter had changed the layout of his face from attractive simply in a rakish and dangerous way, to charming and nearly boyish.

 

 _Handsome_.

 

For a few minutes or eternities—time was always weird on the cusp of a blank-out—Garrus mapped and memorized the many lines of Zaeed’s face, his own gaze lingering, his heart beating slightly faster with uncategorized anticipation. When Zaeed met his eyes again, Garrus grinned, goofy and lopsided, not even caring that his _entire face_ was burning and twinging and _tugging_ worse than ever.

 

The only thing that mattered was that Zaeed smiled back instantly, wide and unrestrained. His bright-tired gaze held Garrus’s for another brief eternity and Garrus’s breath caught, drawn-out and nearly silent.

 

“Huh,” he exhaled, soft and revelatory. Zaeed’s brows lifted.

 

“What?” he asked, still smiling, but it was small again, and once more leavened with concern. “Somethin’ up?”

 

Garrus drew in a deep, endless breath and let it out as a dreamy, approving-accusing sigh. “Yeeeaah. You and Bain . . . have the same mouth. Same wise-ass, little shit-smirk. Same nice smile. Buuuuut . . . both look even _better_ on _you_.”

 

After a good ten seconds of startled chagrin and disbelief, Zaeed smirked—wise-ass _and_ little shit—then huffed, bemused and wary. “They _do,_ do they?”

 

“Mmmmmm _hm_.” Garrus sighed as his eyes closed, shutting out light and the entire world. Shutting _off_ existence. But he could still see Zaeed’s crooked-kindred smirk and keen-mismatched eyes on the backdrop of encroaching nonexistence: clear and bright as moonlight, stark and unforgettable as daylight. “Han’some. _Sexy_.”

 

Now, Zaeed barked a startled, utterly incredulous guffaw. “I am, am I? You _sure_ you haven’t been dippin’ into your pain-meds, Detective? Or into somethin’ a bit stronger?”

 

“Ssssuuuure,” Garrus averred, sibilant and slow. “Mmhm. Like your face. ‘S dangerous and kind.”

 

“Aww. Poor, _tired_ Detective Garrus.” Cool-callused-perfect fingertips traced Garrus’s left cheekbone, brow, then down the bridge of his nose. They hesitated more than briefly before ghosting over his lips. That was good for a long, deep, nearly rousing shiver. One that Garrus settled into as Zaeed’s index and middle finger traced the outline of his mouth. Well, half of it, then drifting away with nothing but a truncated, self-mocking sigh as accompaniment. “Go to sleep, yeah? You’re safe as houses, here, and nothin’ bad’ll happen to you. Bain won’t let it, and . . . and neither will I. You’re safe.”

 

“Hmm . . . _sssuuuure_. . . ?”

 

“ _Ten thousand percent_ -sure, yeah.”

 

“’Kay. ‘Night, Zaeed. . . .”

 

“Nighty-night, Garrus. Sweet dreams.”

 

“Same.” And with that, the last tiny tension in Garrus’s long, whipcord frame dissipated, leaving him leaden and weightless, all at once. Too far gone to know what he was saying— _that ship_ had, in fact, sailed some minutes prior—as was often the case with his blank-outs, he was now, too far gone to remember his mortifying blatherskite when he woke up later. Probably.

 

Hopefully.

 

“ _DILLLLLF_ ,” was the last thing Garrus’s traitor-mind and enabler-mouth declared before the epic blank-out—approximately eleven hours deep and more profound than any rest he’d had in living memory, as well—turned the entirety of existence _off_ with a definitive and no-nonsense _click_.

 

TBC


	4. FOUR: The Morning After the Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night in which nothing—and everything—happened, touch-starved and always-pragmatic (quietly cynical) Garrus’s day _gets off_ to a late and . . . unexpected sort of start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Garrus-introspection. Self-love, stroke-fantasy, more self-love. Implied past heartbreak and angst. Mentions of recent injury/healing/pain. Mentions of past relationships and friendships. Mention of past minor character death.

Existence returned to Garrus after many hours of _actual sleep_ , but _consciousness_ . . . took a bit longer.

 

Murky sunlight teased and lightened his closed eyelids until they were more reddish-brown than black. He instinctively opened them, after some indefinable span. Sluggishly following suit, his body roused itself with some effort from the depths of true rest . . . something to which it’d long-since grown unused.

 

Parts of him ached—some more than others, some marrow-deep—and somewhat fewer parts didn’t. In the middle of his amygdala’s matter-of-fact, almost passive cataloguing of both his surroundings and his physical state, Garrus’s neocortex came warily, dazedly online. He blinked, and his brow furrowed, then with another _click_ , everything from the agony of his head to the unfamiliar surroundings made sudden sense. The processes collectively labeled _awareness_ resumed their juggernaut-methodical processing and sorting out of Garrus’s continued existence.

 

_Bain’s father’s house_ , he recalled, his mouth twitching as if wanting to become a frown. Or perhaps a smile. It was too soon after regaining cogence to extrapolate which.

 

He yawned cavernously, groaning halfway through it at the way his entire face and most of his right skull seemed to resist the motion. To _throb_ like a broken tooth with a rotten-sensitive nerve at center.

 

It wasn’t until Garrus had laboriously remastered his body’s reaction to this perpetual agony—throttled it down from near-psychotic paranoia and panic, to a calmer, if still over-alert resignation that was more like his default state of being—that he noticed he was hard.

 

Having gone so long without any substantive R.E.M. sleep—and even when he slept for long enough to dream, those dreams were always nightmares of garish, overwhelming sensory data, and nebulous dread and horror—Garrus’s body hadn’t allowed such wasteful spontaneity as morning wood in quite some time. _Even when_ he’d taken more than an hour or two of what passed for his rest these days.

 

Grunting and wincing as he sat up enough to prop himself up on his elbows, Garrus shifted the light coverlet half-covering him, and squinted at the distended crotch of his still-unwrinkled blue jeans for several disapproving minutes. When his erection didn’t wither from the potency of the near-glare, Garrus finally sighed and flopped back down in the pillows with more resignation. This time, it was tinged with exasperation and rue.

 

Another several minutes passed with Garrus doing his best to ignore this increasingly intense heat-and-ache from points far south of his rebuilt face. He had to be vigilant at keeping his hand from automatically moving to take care of the unexpected and irritating state.

 

Sheer spite and refusal to cede even a few feverish, efficient minutes of clumsy-rushed stroking to his unruly body—bad enough that it tended to whine and pity itself since he’d been shot in the face, without Garrus’s normally pragmatic mind catering to its whims—kept Garrus both stoic and determined to will away this inconvenience. Just as he’d been doing increasingly less over the past few years. His body knew what was expected of it and had, whining aside and for the most part, fallen in line adequately regarding Garrus’s expectations, requirements, and demands.

 

Since getting shot, however . . . it’d seemed to take any opportunity to shit-can all its training and progress and _plead_ for things such as Garrus’s prescribed—but never once used—painkillers. For _thrills_ , such as physical altercations, unnecessary sexual attention either from Garrus or _any_ willing hand, and tactile comforts. It really wasn’t picky.

 

And, more often than not, Garrus’s body could be and had been both flustered and contented with even just a kind and comradely touch.

 

It was _that_ meek, but powerful desire that nearly felled Garrus most often, and especially since waking up in the hospital after the first of the surgeries. So much that when Bain had visited him just after—looking wrecked and relieved and so damned _happy_ to see Garrus awake and _alive_ —and had placed a shaking, ginger hand on Garrus’s shoulder, warm and heavy not with strength, but with genuine _affection_ , Garrus had nearly broken down in some frightening, awful way. Possibly tears, possibly screams, possibly rage . . . possibly some other, unpredictable thing that Garrus had refused to give into for _everyone’s_ sakes. But especially for the sake of his only friend in the world.

 

Suffice it to say, it’d taken what little willpower and restraint he’d had post-surgery to contain himself . . . to not lose his composure and freak out his future-partner barely two days after the Arterius-mess had reached its operatic and in parts tragic conclusion.

 

Since the hospital, Garrus had been fighting harder and harder—more and more _desperately_ —to stifle that scary response to any kindnesses lavished upon him, whether that of physical reassurance or emotional. He’d found that he’d burnt-out on the old paranoia that’d kept him going since he was seventeen and, nearly a decade later, found a new form of it. One that kept him on tenterhooks not regarding the possibility of the death and destruction of those he cared for and had sworn to _protect_. No, this paranoia was about _his own life and safety_ , and the sneaking, corrosive nature of kindness. Of caring. Of friendship and love.

 

They were, he sensed tentatively then with growing certainty, things that _truly_ had the power to destroy his focus and himself. Thus, possibly those around him . . . or possibly the other way around. But either way, Garrus’s assured destruction wouldn’t be avoidable, it would be eventual. _Utter_ , and in ways getting shot in the face or even murdered could never eclipse.

 

Garrus now knew that the most dire and direct danger wasn’t to his loved ones and the innocent people who couldn’t protect themselves. It was to _himself and his duty_ , for once those unassailable and fortified walls crumbled and fell . . . who, then, would be safe? How could Garrus, rendered vulnerable and prey to doubts, weaknesses, and hesitation—to a faltering of his convictions, determination, and certitude—protect _anyone_ , once he, himself, had no protections?

 

He couldn’t. That was one of his life’s greatest, most frightening certainties: Until everyone he cared for and chose to protect was an unassailable fortress and bastion of their own . . . Garrus could never afford to be anything less. For their sakes and his own.

 

So, of course, he couldn’t be a fortress if he crumbled every time Bain Massani was his warm, silly, irrepressibly kind and endearingly ridiculous self. And in light of that, Garrus definitely couldn’t even consider accepting friendly overtures from Lt. Shepard—who was terse and blunt, even for such a hard-ass of an ell-tee, but not unkind and even, sometimes, randomly hilarious—or Alenko and Williams. And the latter two were, right after Bain and James Vega, extraordinarily easy-going and inclusive.

 

Even Captain Anderson, though a bit reserved and grave, gave off such a supportive, tough love _father-figure_ vibe that Garrus often found himself shying away from the older man, just in case. . . .

 

Just in case.

 

Garrus had never had much luck with fathers, father-figures, or even just confusingly intriguing older men. A thing which he supposed would give Dr. Karin Chakwas—one of the department’s most lauded and intimidatingly incisive shrinks—no end of therapy session-material.

 

Already, after a couple months of thrice-weekly sessions—upped from a mere two—she’d already wormed her clever-keen way inside Garrus’s frequently frazzled mind. He often found himself questioning his own actions, words, and even thoughts in her drawling-ponderous, British-lady voice.

 

In fact, right now, she was asking him why he shied away from and flat-out _fled_ from his own sexual and emotional preferences and needs, like a man running from a burning shack filled with cannibal-ghosts.

 

Huffing with cynical amusement, Garrus felt both smug _and_ disappointed at the speed with which his hard-on played dead, at thoughts of “Dr. Chakwas’” observations, insights, and conclusions. At the thought that, no matter how much she let slip regarding her theories about him, she played the main bulk of that iceberg much closer to her vest.

 

What Dr. Chakwas saw of Garrus and what she _chose to speak on regarding_ Garrus were two completely different beasts. And Garrus wasn’t comfortable spending quality-time with either of them—certainly not before breakfast, or whatever meal the time of day dictated.

 

Once again opening his still-tired, but not burning eyes to a markedly brighter room, Garrus sighed again and levered himself fully upright, swinging his legs to the floor as he automatically felt for his service weapons and unregistered carry . . . all three were still present, and still safely holstered and safely _safety-ed_.

 

Garrus, himself, was in his dark-blue athletic socks and his regulation shoes were neatly lined-up in front of the night-table. Considering that he’d apparently passed-out fully-dressed, removing his shoes beforehand seemed unlikely.

 

For a few moments, he frowned absently at his feet, wondering at what appeared to be sudden thoughtfulness on Bain’s part . . .  then he froze just as he braced his hands on the edge of the bed to shove himself to his feet.

 

Not _Bain’s_ thoughtfulness, but . . . Bain’s father’s.

 

Eyelids fluttering shut as the strangest whimper tried to burble out of his throat, Garrus immediately saw the face of the man in question: weary, weathered, and scarred all up and down the right side. Even worse than Garrus’s own face. He could see, as if it was right in front of him, that Bain-y, little shit-smirk which, clearly, wasn’t _Bain-y_ , but _Zaeed-y_ , and spoke convincingly of familial resemblance between two otherwise physically dissimilar men.

 

Unlike his son’s dark, warm eyes, _Zaeed Massani’s_ tutone eyes had been pale and galvanizing . . . but strangely unshielded even as they’d been mysterious and rather sad. And his gaze hadn’t burned Garrus—much as nearly _everything else had_ for nearly one-third of his life. It had _electrified_ him. Thrilled him, somewhere below tons of exhaustion and bleary-struggling focus.

 

Between those eyes and that _smile and smirk,_ and the coarse gentility of Zaeed Massani’s careful, unexpectedly tender _touch_. . . .

 

The ghost-caress of callused fingertips running along his wounded-healing cheek and jaw, with puzzling reverence, made Garrus shiver. It broke him out in gooseflesh and forced that ridiculous, mortifying whimper out of him at last and against his will.

 

The shivers and chills resulting from that sense-memory quickly gave way to the flush-blanch-deepening-flush of every millimeter of his skin. One which worked its way inward and toward the center of his body, which was simultaneously sending a dismaying and impossibly intense wave of heat along all his nerve-endings. And most especially to the erection that’d nearly completely faded in the preceding minutes, thus reviving it with almost supernatural speed and determination.

 

Once it was fully back and more insistent than ever, Garrus knew that this morning, his body’s needs went well beyond a simple need for kind touch and trustworthy solidarity. Its pleas were outright _demands_ that would not be put-off, shut-down, or ignored.

 

Those needs and demands co-opted Garrus’s detailed—surely idealized—remembrance of rough-tender traces along his injured face, and imagined those fingers trailing teasingly up the insides of his thighs. Up the desperate, contact-ravenous length of his cock and alternating with tight-strong strokes designed to get Garrus to the edge . . . then becoming gentle and almost teasing once more, to bring him back from that dizzying precipice.

 

As tortuous as that was, it was at least as much of a relief, this postponement of a release that’d destroy every one of Garrus’s brittle-tired defenses and reasons not to. . . .

 

. . . oh, _so_ many things. . . .

 

Garrus’s life had always been nothing but a series of downward-trajectories and steep slopes. And _all of them_ had been slippery, indeed, even if he hadn’t initially realized that. With tired irony and miserable amusement—with whatever given-over states existed beyond battered frustration and beat-down bitterness—he gave-in to his body’s insistence on having _this_ , here and now.

 

After all . . . what was one more sliding-down/falling-down regret on the growing heap?

 

Too ambushed and flustered and wound-up to tamp-down this chain of black-and-white thinking and self-aware catastrophizing, Garrus didn’t bother with stopping his hand this time. He had his fly unzipped and his boxers navigated in seconds, hissing as his calluses glanced across the tip of his cock—fast-dry-ungentle—en route to freeing him from the confines of underwear and trousers.

 

Garrus’s imagination and libido wandered all their old, well-worn paths, despite few and far-between opportunities to do so recently. As he took himself harshly in-hand, half-anxious to simply have this moment of weakness over and done, he closed his eyes again and imagined Zaeed Massani’s mouth in place of his hand. Imagined the other man kneeling between his spread thighs and pushing them even wider. . . .

 

Applying that crooked-clever mouth all over Garrus’s cock, from tip to balls and back, even as his first two fingers traced their way along Garrus’s perineum, to press against the cagey-twitchy-tense entrance to his body.

 

He imagined Zaeed’s pale eyes holding his gaze. Imagined those smirking-sinful lips and the controlled-scrape of intent teeth as Zaeed worked him over like it was worship. . . .

 

As Garrus’s breathing stuttered and hitched and caught, his body tensed and grew sensitized. He thrust enthusiastically into his grip more and more, until he was barely moving his hand at all, and the near-noiseless complaints of the bed-frame sounded just below his hearing. He imagined more kisses and licks, nibbling and delightfully dirty sucking letting mind and body use whatever fantasies they needed to achieve a steadily-building release.

 

He imagined Zaeed fingering him open . . . burning and slightly alarming, then hot-full- _good_ , and working him toward that catastrophic climax steadily. And all while wearing a bemused-wondering expression that Garrus hadn’t received from _anyone_ —the occasional one-night-stands he sometimes followed home—in the eight years since the ludicrous mess with Adrien Victus had FUBARed in damned-near- _every_ awful direction that had been remotely applicable.

 

Another sound, wounded and wrecked, escaped his slightly-parted lips . . . which he then licked, then doubled-down on his efforts to just get off and be done. It wasn’t a difficult feat. Although, normally, any reminders, no matter how innocuous—if any reminders could be called such regarding that slice of Garrus’s life—of his ill-fated, selfishly irresponsible, _greedy_ sexual relationship with his dead best friend’s grieving father were the most effective dash of liquid nitrogen to the dick he ever wanted to experience.

 

_Now_ , memories of Garrus’s first lover, and the first and only lover for whom he’d been able to feel _feelings_ , were drowned out by Garrus’s stark-bright-hot desire to have _Zaeed Massani_ do with and to him all the things _Adrien_ had once done with such obsessive ardor. And many more things, besides.

 

Anything. _Everything_.

 

First and foremost, and for the first time since Adrien had conclusively ended things between them, Garrus fantasized about what it might be like, after all this time, to have more than just his own graceless, disappointing fingers inside him. Being on the receiving-end of anal penetration hadn’t been something he’d particularly enjoyed with the first handful of one-nighters he’d begun picking up after the Adrien Debacle. And Garrus’d certainly ceased seeking—from those unimpressive, uninteresting, _unengaging_ sexual excursions—the nearly frightening ecstasy and release _Adrien_ had been able to wring from him.

 

But now . . . with the memory of Zaeed Massani’s damaged-rakish face, smirking smile, and keen-kindred _eyes_ so persistent and clear in his mind’s eye, Garrus let himself imagine further and more than he had in so long. With every atom of his singular and determined focus, _he imagined_ — _saw_ — _was_ sprawled and splayed in bed, with Zaeed’s hard, hot body between his thighs. Looming over him and maintaining eye-contact that was as far beyond smoldering as the heart of a sun was beyond a campfire.

 

Soon—but never soon _enough_ —Zaeed’s body was on him fully. _In him fully_. Invading him and taking him over with a series of powerful, implacable, relentless thrusts that burned and ached and made every inch of Garrus cry out with startlement at the rightness of it. With a hunger for _more_ that felt unslakeable. Instantly, that dug-down, infernal-eternal _need_ consumed Garrus as utterly as Zaeed’s breath-stealing, drowning-deep kisses.

 

Kisses which only stopped when Zaeed pulled away enough to look down into Garrus’s eyes and smirk-smile.

 

“Gonna make me _work_ for your O-face, then, Detective? _Goddamn,_ ” he rumbled on the back of flattering panting and groaning—then vehement swearing. His voice was hoarse, low, and breathless—absolutely _wrecked_ — as he continued rocking into Garrus with hard, slow strokes that slowed further and seemed to double in intensity and force. When Garrus whimpered, pathetic and desperate, Zaeed’s smile-smirk widened wickedly. “’S alright, though. I’m a firm believer in _earnin’_ m’keep, me.”

 

With no more words wasted, Zaeed put his back—and at least six other _very_ motivated people’s backs—into taking Garrus apart.

 

It was raw and overwhelming and _glorious_. Zaeed was lightning and flame incarnate, melting every bit of icy reserve Garrus had been cultivating since he was old enough to realize that sometimes . . . even one’s family wasn’t necessarily one’s friends. Nor were one’s actual friends . . . _actual friends_ , for that matter.

 

But _Zaeed_ was so electrifying and hot, and he made every molecule of Garrus’s body feel the same. Every thrust seemed to drive that stimulating heat ever deeper—far deeper than prostate or spleen or whatever. Core-deep, and beyond, until Garrus could feel Zaeed in his soul, not merely hot and electric, but bright. _Warm_. And that bright warmth was, for a few precious moments, _everything_. All that Garrus had ever needed or wanted to see and _feel_ . . . and have be for _him_.

 

Loosing a soft, surrendered, breathless cry, he came . . . with a crescendo and release like a supernova. As he emptied himself, he lost all sense of anything and everything, that self, included. As he and mind’s eye-Zaeed held and shared their naked-honest gaze—never mind the certainty that this, here, was a significant and surely spreading breach in his fortress’s outer defenses—Garrus’s mind’s-eye stayed open the entire time, even as his actual eyes squinched shut tighter at this apex of his surrender and his climax.

 

Before the most powerful of the aftershocks faded and before his body had begun to cool and still, Zaeed was gone from Garrus’s mind. All but the faintest ghost of that rough-tender touch had evaporated to a wistful, soft-focused sort of not-quite-remembering.

 

When he returned to reality and himself in full, he was, indeed, sprawled on the bed—half-off, actually—with his jeans and boxers half-wrestled one-third of the way down his lean thighs. His right leg was bent with his knee in the air, while the left was splayed at a very uncomfortable angle, to allow his index and middle fingertips entry to his desperate body. He’d gone just deep enough to feel the solid, stretching burn of those fingers, but not enough to do damage from lack of preparation and lubrication.

 

He lay there for lazy-dazed, wrung-out minutes, panting and shivering in the cool air of the room and from the cling of his sweaty undershirt and button-down. The hand that had been clenched in the askew coverlet ached a bit from all the clenching and clawing. His other hand, once freed of his body, had migrated to the damp, come-spattered bottom of his button-down.

 

The early afternoon sunlight painted gold and charcoal interplay on the walls of the room and Garrus could hear Bain’s big mouth and laugh sounding, distant and downstairs.

 

It was followed by the curt-amused rumble of Zaeed’s replies.

 

With another surprising flush of heat and want and anticipation, Garrus’s body tried to rally. _Kept trying_ , even despite having just come harder than it had in years.

 

A glance down his body was enough for him to see the wet-red tip of his cock without sitting up. He was still more than half-hard.

 

From downstairs, came Zaeed’s gravelly-brief chuckles. In patently obvious response to that stimulus, Garrus’s dick stood up straighter and turned redder. More electric jolts raced to and from his nerve-endings, and along his skin.

 

“This is a bad idea. The _baddest_. And you’re the worst,” he informed himself and his stubborn dick, but didn’t stop his hand’s determined drift from abdomen to groin. Nor did he stop the brush, then stroke of his fingers, and finally the grip of his come-tacky hand. He gasped, shuddered, and moaned silently, arching and pushing his cock through the relaxed, slippery channel of hand and fingers.

 

Then closed his eyes and _Zaeed’s eyes_ were waiting for him, welcoming and mysterious and wry. Representing potential relief not just for Garrus’s needy body, but his needy . . . everything else.

 

_Well, I suppose_ anything’s _possible. Whether anything is actually_ probable _, and enough to suggest reliable manifestations and reoccurrences is . . . another theory, entirely._

 

Garrus’s mouth stretched obstinately wider and pushed his aching right cheek higher—in spite of the eye-watering pain lancing warningly through flesh and bone—in something that was definitely not so kind as a cynical smirk, or self-directed sneer. No teeth were on display, but had anyone witnessed such a flat, death’s-head grimace, they’d have immediately turned away.

 

The near-agony of this forced and held grimace cleared Garrus’s mind with speedy efficacy, and he held the expression as he stroked himself to full hardness once more, then—after a brief debate between his incautious libido and paranoid common sense—teased then breached his body again with a middling two fingers, not an ambitious _three_ or underwhelming _one_. But that, too, now that he wasn’t entirely in the throws of his previous fantasy, was achy, bordering on painful with every shallow, but insistent thrust.

 

But Garrus was used to feeling and observing his own pain—and his own reactions to it—without getting lost in the sensation or paying it more credence than warranted or deserved. And, as he’d learned early, there was a strange and potent pleasure in harnessing pain and riding it out. Riding it to _whatever end_ , be it cessation of pain, intensifying of pain, or pleasure.

 

Or pleasure _because_ of intensifying pain—certain kinds, anyway.

 

And even if that end was to be death, which had never been an unlikelihood, considering Garrus’s lifelong, deeply fatalistic and proactive nature, and his chosen career.

 

So, after acknowledging the twinge of his face, then the shudder-flinch of his over-sensitized body as his fingers burned carefully, incrementally deeper, he held onto his mental snapshot of Zaeed’s compelling gaze and crooked-sly smirk. Caught between agony and an admittedly rare-odd sort of beauty, Garrus _burned and bloomed_ , like suns and flowers, when Zaeed’s smirk relaxed and warmed into an affectionate smile that curled and deepened with more wicked promises.

 

Fond-callused fingertips followed the curvature of Garrus’s right cheek. And under the weight and heat and _kinship_ that Zaeed—even just a mental construct of him—represented, Garrus gave-in _just this once_. . . for a second time. His body _and_ his mind said _yes_ to a want that was a need, and to a need that wasn’t a _necessity_ —but could become one, if Garrus wasn’t careful.

 

And all of _Zaeed’s_ old soul-understanding and young soul-appreciation shone from his mismatched eyes and hyper-real being like a never-ending galaxy: come into brilliant, beautiful being for no greater purpose than to exist with and illuminate Garrus’s void-carved abysses and quietly consuming dark-spaces.

 

TBC


	5. FIVE: Uh . . . Do WHAT, Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus rejoins the waking world. Bain is eating breakfast and Zaeed is shirtless. Garrus’s face soon aches from smiling and laughing, and Bain happily bitches about _all the stuff_ , including and especially yoga. And Zaeed is shirtless. Tone and dynamic between Garrus and Bain HEAVILY influenced by the Tenacious D song, “[Friendship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgpTgwUesQI).” And Zaeed? Is TOTALLY shirtless, FYI.
> 
> Hand me that shotgun, buddy—also, that chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes/Warnings: Banter. Flirting (which Garrus is bad at). More flirtation. Smoldering gazes abound. Mentions of healing injury and allusions to self-love that happened in a prior chapter. Mentions of yoga and vegans and twinks. (Oh, my.)

“. . . so, _now_ , she’s on me to take bloody _yoga_ classes! Basically, Doc Chakwas says ‘jump!’ the brass don’t bother askin’ how high until they’re in midair!” Bain scoffed sullenly and dug back into his tureen-sized bowl of Marshmallow Choco-Bombs. At his elbow, also on the pristine, aquamarine center-island counter, were what looked to be about one hundred bucks in scratch-offs and a tall, _full_ brown paper bag.

 

Freshly-showered, and clad in sprung gray sweats and his favorite, old and faded Academy t-shirt—smirking with fond annoyance—Garrus gave up lingering in the entryway and strolled into the airy-bright, colorful kitchen properly. Despite the continuing and very noticeable tingle-and-burn of his carefully clean and shaved—left-side only, for the latter—face, he was composed, if hesitant when Bain and Zaeed looked up. The former grinned, showing off probably half a mouthful of masticated Choco-Bombs, smeared all over his teeth, which resulted in a pained, uncontrolled grimace from Garrus.

 

The latter—wearing only a pair of plain, black boxer shorts that showed off strong, deliciously muscular thighs and abs that’d make a washboard look out of shape—was leaning back with his hands braced on the counter. To his right, was a matte, chrome double-sink and to his left was a huge orange-chrome microwave. Zaeed, himself, was completely out of direct line-of-sight of the window over said sink. Purposely so, no doubt. He smirked at Garrus somewhat obliquely, below a hooded, assessing once-over that allowed an increasingly dry-mouthed Garrus to steal hungry, but brief glances at Zaeed’s shoulders, chest, and abs. _And_ the intriguing bit of a vee below those abs and above the waistband of the boxer shorts. Garrus could far too easily imagine himself falling to his knees to explore and worship that vee with his mouth, and with all the dedication and zeal of the newly-converted. . . .

 

Doing his best to ignore the resulting flush—much of which was from tacit knowledge of how he’d spent his initial waking and a goodly portion of his shower-time, and not just the fact of Zaeed’s striking physical definition and dangerous magnetism—Garrus nodded once at Zaeed, respectfully and warily. Then he wisely averted his eyes and crossed from the entryway to the center-island, where Bain managed to lounge with enviable composure and balance on the middle stool.

 

Taking the stool to his partner’s left, Garrus clapped Bain on the upper back and received a friendly elbow to the ribs in return.

 

“What’s this about Chakwas and yoga?” Garrus asked, clearing his throat and doing his best to ignore the things Zaeed’s stare and partially-dressed state did to his still sensitized and up-for-anything body. He absently reached past Bain and his cereal-tureen to poke the brown paper bag. The resulting glassy tinkle-clank of several large, liquid-heavy bottles made him snort with an utter lack of surprise.

 

Bain—dressed in madras-style shorts that were as faded as Garrus’s t-shirt, a tank-top in an eye-watering shade of coral, and lemon-yellow flipflops that’d seen better days—started to speak. Then, as he glanced over and saw the resigned-disapproving look on Garrus’s face, thankfully finished chewing and swallowing rather than spraying it, while he said it.

 

“Oh, forgot to tell ya in all the promotion-excitement, didn’t I? Our _beloved_ psych-doc, aside from demanding the unalloyed brilliance of my company once a week, has set me up with yoga classes. Thrice weekly.” Bain rolled his eyes and shoveled another Choco-Bomb-y spoonful in his mouth before going on with wounded pride. “Didn’t even trust me to set up _my own_ appointment and such. Just called this yoga-place that _she_ bloody chose, right in the middle of our weekly! Then she set up a schedule for a _month_ of classes with _Mr. Whoever-Pretzel-Legs-Vegan-Balls_ , and glared at me until I handed over my goddamn credit card! Now, some bloke called bloody ‘ _Scott’_ s got my AmEx info—which is just Jim-dandy-as-fuck—and I’m stuck with at least four weeks of thrice-weekly bloody yoga! _No, four and a half weeks_ , because _this_ month has five!” Bain scowled and chewed, chewed and scowled, then swallowed with particular vehemence. “First class is bloody _today_ , of all days—ain’t even settled into my Ell-Oh-Ay routine, yet! Doc even called to _remind me_ , like I’m a goddamn child! And an untrustworthy one, at that! _Me_!”

 

Throughout this unusually annoyed rant from his partner— _genuine_ annoyance and irritation, unlike Bain’s usual put-on bitching and griping—Garrus found himself fighting a wider, more painful grin. Then a chuckle. Then, finally, an outright laugh. This fight, he lost rather quickly, bracing his long arms on the counter and burying his head in them as Bain’s pouty puppy-face reached epic wibble-levels.

 

“You’re such a callous, unsympathetic prick,” Bain huffed when Garrus was just managing to control himself. That huff sent him right back off to the races, complete with swimming vision due to laughter-tears.

 

“Ah, Bain,” he practically giggled, shaking his head and snorting. He wiped his right eye carefully, then his left, and grinned back over at a haughty-looking Bain. “Only _you_ would be upset that instead of having to see Chakwas slightly more frequently than her wife does, _you_ get to go to stretch-bend-and-relax classes for . . . what, an hour per session?”

 

Bain still looked haughty and offended, but his face colored a telling maroon. “. . . it’s, ah, fifty minutes per class. But _thrice-weekly_!” he added in a pathetic whine when Garrus started snickering again, breathless and damned-near wheezing. He managed to catch his breath in a big gasp, however, when Bain used his distraction and iffy balance on the stool to shove him right off it.

 

Garrus easily caught himself without even missing a guffaw, and leaned on the center-island counter, bracing his body with his bony elbows. “I now have neither pity, _nor_ respect for you, Massani.”

 

“Have you ever?” Bain snarked, crinkling his face with overdone sulkiness, even as the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

 

“Nope. Just stating facts.”

 

“Shove your facts up your arse, Stretch.”

 

“Sure. That’s where I keep my facts, anyway.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. What else is new?”

 

“Only that I love you, pardner.” Garrus reached over to lightly thwap Bain’s bicep, and Bain smirked and went back to his Choco-Bomb chomping. Garrus started and blinked over at Zaeed when a slight motion—Zaeed crossing his bare forearms over his bare chest—caught his eyes and held them. Well, it was Zaeed’s motion that did the catching, but Zaeed’s _physique_ that did the holding. And holding. And some more holding. . . .

 

“You’d _better_ love me,” Bain said through his overfull mouth, swallowed, shoved in another spoonful, then resumed talking. “’Cuz _you’re_ comin’ wif me.”

 

“Yeah . . . I’m definitely coming, I’m—wait, _what_?” Garrus forsook Zaeed’s drool-worthy body and blinked over at his partner, who was smirking deeply. “Okay, one of us has gone mad, Massani. I think it’s you.”

 

Bain grinned his Choco-Bomb-y grin again and it was more than a little malicious. “Doc was kind enough to schedule two places in the beginner’s class. Said if I could talk you into coming with me, with two detectives taking therapeutic yoga as precedent, she could convince the insurance to cover eighty-five percent of the bill. Leaving a comparably small copay. And you _know_ how I love buyin’ shit at a discount, or in bulk or economy-portions.”

 

Remembering the SaveCo Sale-falderol of less than one year ago—as far as Garrus knew, Bain _still_ had the two discounted caskets in storage, _somewhere_ —Garrus sighed. “Yeah, I know. Goddamnit.”

 

“Aw, c’mon! Long, lean fella, like you? It’ll be a slice of pizza, this! Just show up, stretch, bend, and _relax_ , as you say. Maybe flirt with some pretty little vegan twink, or something—”

 

“ _Ugh_.” Garrus shuddered and Bain was the one to snicker, this time.

 

“What? Vegans not to your taste then, Detective Garrus?”

 

Startled into looking over at Zaeed, Garrus licked his lips then bit them nervously, but not without noting the down-up-down tick of Zaeed’s keen, gray-green gaze. He could practically feel that scalpel-edge keenness as it traced his lips, like the memory of a teasing, shameless kiss.

 

Or, he could before he forced himself to close his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he said: “It wasn’t the, ah, vegans I was objecting to, Zaeed.”

 

Zaeed looked surprised for a moment, his brows shooting up . . . then his smirk widened, crooked-wicked-rakish. “Ah. Glad to have that cleared up, then.”

 

“I’m glad you’re glad,” Garrus replied, then kicked himself for unthinkingly giving what had probably been the stupidest, least adult-sounding reply of his life. And defensive-sulky, to boot.

 

But Zaeed was still smirking—grinning, really. And he was giving Garrus another thorough once-over that lingered, more often than it didn’t, at Garrus’s mouth.

 

“Aw, but my happiness is leavened with pity. For those twinks, y’know? Poor, sparkly, passed-over bastards,” Zaeed clarified when he halted his approving assessment at Garrus’s eyes, at last. “But their loss is some lucky-goddamn- _DILF’s_ gain, eh?”

 

“I . . . suppose,” Garrus drew out with reluctance. There was a faint tickle of déjà vu at the back of his brain, as if he was re-experiencing or only half-remembering something important . . . assuming one’s definition of ‘half’ was uselessly broad.

 

And indeed, Zaeed was watching him rather closely, locking their eye-contact simply by the intensity of his compelling, heterochromatic gaze. There was a strange, breath-held tension between them that seemed to seal them in this moment and lock the rest of the world out. Garrus frowned and started to speak—but held his piece as he started to remember something from last night.

 

Zaeed gently stroking his cheek he already remembered, of course. And would likely never _forget_ , for even though the sense-memory had worn almost entirely away, the emotional memory was both dream-hazy and dream-vivid.

 

What Garrus was remembering in that instant was staring up at Zaeed’s face—wanting to touch and trace every inch of scars and scar tissue until he knew them by heart and _by heart_ —and then slow, melty, warm darkness. Darkness that was alive and _safe_ with the sound of Zaeed’s voice, half-laughing as it said: _“Nighty-night, Garrus. Sweet dreams.”_

 

“ _Sammmme_ ,” Garrus could hear in memory’s ear: a yawning and slightly slurred coo. Utterly dozy. Then a laugh that was more of a happy hum before existence winked right out on a final drawled, loopy-mischievous word . . . well, _acronym_ —

 

“Have you _both_ gone goddamned _deaf_ , all of a sudden?” Bain demanded, his voice an unwelcome juggernaut in the two-person universe that had formed around Garrus and Zaeed.

 

Starting and jumping, Garrus broke his and Zaeed’s gaze—or perhaps Zaeed was the one who did, or perhaps they both did. Either way, they turned their startled glares to Bain, whose wide, dark eyes ticked between them with more than a little puzzlement as he shoveled a last, mostly-milk spoonful into his gob.

 

“Bloody _hell_ , boy,” Zaeed grumbled, sounding put-out, and at the same time Garrus groused: “Dick.”

 

“What’d _I_ do?” Bain squawked, spraying milk-and-soggy-Choco-bits as he did, causing Garrus to lean back and Zaeed to roll his eyes. “Pardon me for enquirin’ if either of you required formal introductions—aside from Dad nearly putting an extra hole in your square skull.” He let his spoon drop from his fingers into his empty cereal-tureen and stood, stretching and shaking his head with put-upon sadness. “ _Of course_ , you don’t need further intros. You’re both grouchy, _barkin’_ arseholes, who can no doubt smell their own, right off the bat. I suppose the next three weeks’ll be you two nutters ganging up on me and laughing about the outnumbered sane-boy in your mad midst. I see how this Leave’s gonna go, already. Yup. I—wait . . . you’re not going to yoga, dressed like _that_ , Vakarian, are you? What-ever will those poor, vegan twinks say?”

 

Thoroughly flustered and distracted by his jumbled-vague memories—and Zaeed’s half-naked body and _all_ -naked gaze—Garrus looked down at his attire. Then up at a frowning Bain, who was resplendent in his _Saved by the Bell_ -throwback finery. Then, he let the slow, upward inch of his eyebrows speak before he did. “I’m not going to yoga with you, Massani.”

 

Bain rolled his eyes. “Now, now, Garry-pants, you know you’re my best little tag-along bitch. Class is at four-twenty, so we don’t gotta be there for nearly two hours. I’m gonna call Rey, hose-off, and I’ll be ready to hit the road by quarter-of.”

 

“I’ll forward all that to someone who cares,” Garrus reassured him with a straight face and voice. They earned him another exasperated eye-roll. Which were followed by a shrug and a faintly lofty smirk as Bain saluted Garrus, then his father, and made for the hallway.

 

“Whatever’s clever, partner. Don’t make me have to honk more than twice for your plodding arse. Dad . . . _don’t_ eat all my goddamn Marshmallow Choco-Bombs, please-and-thank-you. . . .”

 

“My house, my cupboard, my rules,” Zaeed said, also smirking and unapologetic. Bain paused in the entryway to sigh dramatically and mutter to himself . . . then shoot them the finger, both barrels, over his shoulders.

 

Then he made for the living room and the stairs with a spring in his borderline-cocky strut. The silence that fell in his wake wasn’t heavy, but it certainly was . . . charged. Expectant. All but _throbbing_ with . . . potential.

 

Despite having felt Zaeed’s gaze land on him almost immediately after Bain’s always-memorable exit, Garrus continued staring out into the hall. Trying to keep what passed for his composure lately and turning slowly, inexorably crimson under that steady stare.

 

“Soooooo,” he said, almost tasting ozone on his dry tongue. Silence didn’t so much fall again, as Garrus sank willingly into it. He had nowhere relevant to go after that scintillating icebreaker.

 

Zaeed’s brief chuckle rumbled rather warmly in the silence. “A needle pullin’ thread, Maria. . . .”

 

“I . . . may have been presumptuous when we met, last night,” Garrus barely heard himself mumble as the burn of his blush eclipsed the burn of his stitched and reconstructed right face. He was incredibly nervous about meeting Zaeed’s gaze: afraid that he’d get lost in it somehow and give himself away. Though, what there was to give-away, other than a fluke, but powerful attraction to his best friend’s father . . . .

 

Swallowing nervously, Garrus acknowledged to himself that that, alone, was a lifetime’s-worth of give-away. “I’m not entirely sure, now, what’s fact and what’s . . . hmm, hallucination or false memory. But if I _was_ . . . _presumptuous_ —”

 

“If _that’s_ what you wanna label it when a goddamn _sexy_ man eye-fucks a beat-up, old soldier, then purrs like a kitten under his touch, _then_ calls him a _DILF_. Yes. _Totally_ fuckin’ presumptuous of you, Detective. If I was a less forgiving sort, I’d say you’ve earned yourself a spankin’!”

 

His breath catching rather loudly in the airy, silent space, Garrus’s wide, once-again-startled blue eyes met _Zaeed’s_ wide, once-again-startled gray-green ones. Zaeed’s mouth was hanging open in a rictus of absolute mortification that Garrus had, himself, worn less than a minute ago.

 

“Ahhhh,” Zaeed went on quickly, with a nervous, gravelly chuckle, wincing and looking down at his bare feet. His weathered face was several hectic, patchy shades of red. “Sorry, ah, Garrus. Sometimes my clever-goddamn-mouth runs away with the brain I’ve never actually had.”

 

“I, uh . . . I could say the same, since . . . while I was admittedly _non compos mentis,_ I apparently called you a DILF.”

 

“Twice, yep!” Zaeed added with an edgy sort of upbeat-ness, then once more looked as if he wished he hadn’t spoken. Garrus’s face continued to burn ever hotter.

 

“That . . . sounds about right,” he agreed, running a hand over his grown-out curls. They weren’t even close to obscuring his vision, but another few months without a haircut and they just might be. He sighed. “Uh . . . I’m sorry for being so. . . .”

 

“Delusional?” Zaeed’s tone was wry, but gruff. Tense. Garrus frowned and shook his head.

 

“I was going to say _unfiltered_. I have chronic insomnia—comes and goes as it damned-well-pleases. When I _do_ collapse in exhaustion, it . . . involves me rapidly going crazeballs _then_ taking a very sudden, very long siesta. You, um, witnessed the brief, but eventful trajectory of the _crazeballs_ -part.”

 

Zaeed barked a curt laugh, turning toward the sink and window, so that Garrus could only see his profile, limned in sunlight. “A body _would_ have to be going goddamned sideways to call _Zaeed Massani_ a _DILF!_ ”

 

“Dunno about _that_ ,” Garrus disagreed: slow, once again, and quiet, too. He skirted the center-island, picking up Bain’s empty cereal-tureen as he did, Zaeed’s wary-keen eyes on him. Once Garrus reached the sink, he hesitated for a few moments, until he felt Zaeed’s gaze settle on his scarred, right profile. It seemed to grow tangibly warmer and brighter as seconds ambled by. Warmer and brighter, even, than the sun. It was actually doing more to make Garrus squint and furrow his brow, than the cheerfully aggressive, afternoon sunlight shining in through the window above the sink.

 

Placing the large bowl in the sink and running the tap until the bowl overflowed with hot water, Garrus finally shut it off when the water in the bowl was clear and Choco-crud free, then turned to face Zaeed.

 

He once again met that steady, warm-bright gaze, noting that it was also disbelieving and cynical— _sad_ , not so far behind the sunshine-veneer.

 

Taking a step closer to Zaeed, Garrus looked down into his face, studying it openly and smiling a little as he did. At six-four, Garrus was at least a few inches taller than Zaeed, and possibly as many as five. Not that height made any difference to Garrus when it came to larger-than-life persons. If height were measured in attitude, personality, and character, Zaeed Massani was surely an NBA first draft, along with the likes of Shepard, Anderson—and even Kryik, in his weird, _dude-is-a-real-life-Blasto_ way.

 

All that inner-beauty stuff aside, whatever his exact _physical_ height, Zaeed was _very_ nicely-proportioned: the right balance of defined and conditioned muscle, and fluid dexterity. And Garrus had noted, of course, the man’s many tattoos, but those tattoos had been and were still being easily outshined by the man they adorned. Zaeed Massani was a feast for the eyes, indeed. Though, Garrus _did_ have to halt his hand when those greedy eyes fell on the pair of dog-tags around Zaeed’s neck, tangled a bit and with one tag askew on his collarbone and the other settled high in the center of his sternum.

 

“It’s important to keep the ones we’ve lost—or let down—close. Important to remember. Important to _never forget_ ,” Zaeed insisted, heavy and harsh and solemn. His work-roughened hand came up to clutch the dog-tags tight for a few seconds and press them closer to his heart. Then he released them reluctantly and opened shut-tight eyes just as Garrus shifted his own gaze upward. There was no hesitation from either man when it came to maintaining eye-contact. “All the forgiveness in Creation don’t and won’t ever give us the right to forget. Even if it did, I never _would_.”

 

“Agreed. I—” Garrus started, barely above a hoarse whisper, this time mentally acknowledging his many past mistakes and old lack of vigilance. Tarquin Victus hadn’t been the first vulnerable person he’d let down, but he’d been the worst. And all that’d happened after Tarq’s death and over the next year after that, had been. . . .

 

Another mistake. _Mistakes_. Nothing better or worse or more significant than that. Something Garrus would do well not to dwell on too often—to never wear like a hair-shirt and a means of self-flagellation—but also would do well to _never, ever forget_.

 

To remember.

 

Garrus nodded, swallowing around the lump trying to form in his throat and steal his words, and breath. “I agree completely, Zaeed,” he pushed out. Despite the huff-puffing driving the statement, his voice sounded even and calm, as usual.

 

“Yeah. I guess you _do agree_ , Detective,” Zaeed said, soft-rough and quiet-sad . . . even admiring, if Garrus wasn’t greatly mistaken. Though he probably was.

 

He and Zaeed stared at each other some more, cataloging features and smiling. Then Garrus, in a self-aware and ironic turning of last night’s tables, reached up slowly, deliberately, and traced light, reverent fingers along Zaeed’s right cheek. Let his fingertips learn and memorize uneven, twisting, tough-smooth scar tissue and scars, following the natural and man-made signs of time and tide and misadventure—let the stubble speckling the unmarred skin nearer Zaeed’s right jaw prickle his already tingling fingertips. This close, he picked up not-so-fleeting hints of Zaeed’s scent: citrus-bright but musk-dark, too . . . a near-dizzying tease of what Garrus could expect if he buried his face in the crook of Zaeed’s neck and just _inhaled_. . . .

 

He finally allowed his fingertips to hold their position just under Zaeed’s stubborn chin, fighting the urge to stroke the flat of his thumb across the man’s slightly-pouty lower-lip. Said fight resulted in Garrus staring at the tempting lower-lip with every ounce of his focus as he weighed the pros and cons of letting his thumb have its way or not, and torturing himself with barely-formed what-ifs centered around perhaps replacing his undeserving thumb with his own lips.

 

Garrus snapped out of his reverie when Zaeed smirked slowly. The smirk picked up its pace when Garrus met those eyes again.

 

“Welcome back, Detective Garrus,” Zaeed said, warm, but snarky. “How was that brief mental holiday you just took?”

 

Garrus turned scarlet and laughed a little. “Ah. Beneficial? My brief mental holidays help keep me sane. -Ish.”

 

“If you say so, Detective.” Zaeed’s smirk ticked upward on the left side and Garrus shrugged. His scarlet face turned vermilion, but he didn’t look away. He simply took a deeper breath in and let that intriguing, soothing-thrilling scent goad him to a semblance of courage.

 

“I do. And if admiring the . . . DILF-scenery means I’m _sideways_ , Zaeed . . . it’s not like there’s a line of people waiting to call me ‘straight,’ _anyhow_.”

 

The crooked-pleased return of a genuine smile made Garrus’s heart stop, start again, then skip random beats as it raced toward some unimaginable finish-line.

 

“Well.” Zaeed’s smile deepened once again into a playfully wicked, but no less genuine smirk. “Don’t _you_ know the surefire method for catchin’ flies, and turnin’ tigers into housecats, Detective Stroke-y.”

 

At this, Garrus realized he _was_ , indeed, stroking his fingers repeatedly along Zaeed’s jaw. Slowly, like a man savoring his current activity. And Zaeed . . . was not warning him off or even politely putting up with said activity.

 

He was . . . if not encouraging it, certainly allowing and maybe even _enjoying_ it. And he was also . . . flirting.

 

Possibly?

 

 _Definitely not,_ Garrus told himself with quelling harshness.

 

Clearing his throat and fighting the crimsoning of a face that was already registering on the Kelvin scale, Garrus twitched his fingers away from Zaeed’s stubbly jaw and glanced off to his right—at the tattoo on Zaeed’s left shoulder. But not before he caught the fast flicker-flare of unhidden _disappointment_ in Zaeed’s eyes and in the fading curve of his smile

 

When he could see from the corner of his eyes that Zaeed’s smile was no more and his mouth was merely a crooked-cynical line, Garrus forsook the dark-eyed, familiar-faced cherub depicted on the other man’s shoulder. He wanted to say something or do something to bring back the smile and the warmth but couldn’t imagine what eloquent words or magical jazz-hands could be so powerful.

 

And, anyway, Zaeed cleared his throat and turned away before Garrus could initiate eye-contact again. He reached up to the cupboards above the microwave—the play of muscles in strong shoulders, arms, and torso were overshadowed only by the fantastic ass briefly showcased during the reaching—opened them and removed two modestly-sized bowls. Each looked handmade and about one-fifth the size of Bain’s cereal-tureen.

 

Zaeed placed them on the counter and took a deep breath that seemed to shake a bit. But when he looked over at Garrus ten seconds later, he was grinning again, mischievous and playful, if a _bit_ forced.

 

“Wanna help me eat all the boy’s goddamn Choco-Bombs while he’s off playin’ long-distance footsie with that bloody bartender of his?”

 

Caught completely off his guard—that seemed to be the Massani-specialty, and Zaeed was clearly a master—Garrus smiled a little, despite the bitching and twitching of half the muscles in his face. With some effort, he managed the ache and pain because he wanted to and because he _could_ , then laid the past few minutes to rest. For the moment. “Yeah, Zaeed. I’d _love_ to.”

 

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> **Credits/Sources/Thanks :**
> 
>  
> 
> **Powered by:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Portugal. The Man: [Feel It Still](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBkHHoOIIn8)  
> MorMor: [Heaven’s Only Wishful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PvIIn6cc1M)  
> Gillian Welch & David Rawlings: [(Time’s a) Revelator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdYG-Nh_AxU)  
> Hurray for the Riff Raff: [Hungry Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRJ-MuN46E)  
> Marilyn Manson (from the _John Wick Soundtrack_ ): [Killing Strangers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtyeRUsf8f8)  
> The Heavy: [Short Change Hero](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u9ymiSmtXY)  
> ink." [Fever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxYl_faN654)  
> The Travelling Wilburys: [Handle Me with Care](https://youtu.be/1o4s1KVJaVA)  
> Lola Blank: [Don’t Say You Do](https://youtu.be/POVXrFA6ptk)  
> The Buzzcocks: [Everybody’s Happy Nowadays](https://youtu.be/pf2DgSJuUHc)  
> George Harrison: [Got My Mind Set On You.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_71w4UA2Oxo)  
> Alice in Chains: [Brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1d_uuh9iKI), [Down in a Hole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzPX_nnDqc)  
> Tenacious D: [Friendship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgpTgwUesQI)   
>  
> 
> **Aided (and abetted) by:**
> 
>  
> 
> [Mass Effect Wikia,](http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/) because _the beets_ don’t do MOTHERFUCKING SHIT without research and backing up canonical knowledge/theories. Or without having a solid knowledge-base from which to deviate from canon. Any glaring errors or missteps are wholly the author’s addled doing.
> 
>  
> 
> **Inspired by:**
> 
>  
> 
> EVERY FIC [ThreeWhiskeyLunch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewhiskeylunch) has posted on this site. ESPECIALLY the Vaksani (Garrus Vakarian/Zaeed Massani series, [Madness Because the Reasons Don’t Make Sense](https://archiveofourown.org/series/175652%3e). It’s an awesome series, and this THIS mishegoss is all Whiskey’s fault. ALL OF IT.
> 
> Also, Whiskey’s fault? [This vid of Zaeed baking chocolate chip cookies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcJ4WSa6Vng%3e). Whiskey’s perfidy knows no end—they were probably on the Grassy Knoll, too. Not to mention they’re peering into my window _and_ yours at this very moment. Just sayin’.
> 
> But check out “Madness,” and all their other stuff, too. Whiskey’s THE BEST kind of Bioware trashpanda fanficcer. I’m not kidding and I’m not worthy <3  
> ::genuflects::
> 
>  
> 
> **Also note:**
> 
>  
> 
> [THIS](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0444749/mediaviewer/rm1788453120) is the face of Garrus Vakarian’s V.O. actor, Brandon Keener. I was curious about what he looked like and when I saw that photo, I was like: “WHOA! That’s almost EXACTLY how I pictured a human!Garrus—youthful, strong-featured, doofy-handsome, but earnest-looking, too—only not as wiry!”
> 
> Okay, that’s it for notes, for now. To be updated as needed. [BUG BLOGS HERE](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr-com). Feedback/concrit is LIFE, since I don’t know really my arsehole from my earhole when it comes to the Trilogy! Thanks, muchly, for reading, yous guyz!


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